Ubu Mayor: A Harmful Bit of Fun, a play with music by Adam Seelig

From playwright Adam Seelig, founder and director of One Little Goat Theatre Company in Toronto, comes a new play of timely absurdity: Ubu Mayor: A Harmful Bit of Fun. This anti-musical is the result of intoxicatingly driving Alfred Jarry’s 1896 merde-filled masterpiece Ubu Roi head-first into the internationally renowned antics, absurdities and obscenities of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford and his brother, Doug. Ubu Mayor tells the frolicsome tale of a mayor (Ubu) whose wife (Huhu) is having an affair with his older brother (Dudu). Ubu wants Huhu to love him again. Ubu wants what’s best for the city. But both his love and political ideals are foiled by Dudu’s machinations. Readers will enjoy the Fordish banter, presented in Seelig’s iconoclastic dramatic style, and enjoy dipping into the music for such ridiculously poignant tunes as “B-b-b-bacon,” “Etobicokaine,” and “Plenty to Eat at Home.” As Toronto stands at the brink of Ford More Years, everyone will want to read this harmful bit of fun just before the highly anticipated municipal elections. After all, because of everything Toronto has been through, if we don’t laugh we might just cry.

 Praise for the theatrical production of Ubu Mayor:

“As far as the script is concerned, Seelig has written a great one. It’s chalked full of humour and insight. The dialogue is peppered with plenty of Ford sound bites while retaining the spirit of Jarry’s original play. The subject matter is at times crude and the language dirty. But that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” — Mooney on Theatre

“Ubu Mayor is an entertaining, topsy-turvy absurdist romp of political shenanigans and scandal. With music. It really is better to laugh than cry.” — Life with more Cowbell

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Adam Seelig is a poet, playwright, stage director, and the founder of One Little Goat Theatre Company in Toronto, with which he has premiered works by Yehuda Amichai, Thomas Bernhard, Jon Fosse, Claude Gauvreau, Luigi Pirandello and himself. His previous books include Talking Masks (2009), Every Day in the Morning, Slow (2010), and Parts to Whole (2014).