Filth is fun in Haring +Ubu-L

Nothing is more vulgar than the present regime.

This intriguing company note from Sipat Lawin Ensemble is found on the flier that comes in a brown paper bag which is handed to the audience as they trickle in to watch Haring +Ubu-L, the theater group's take on Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. I had been warned to prepare a spare shirt and a towel. I was also asked if I was allergic to peanut butter, or had any qualms about jello. I wanted to ask, we're watching a play, right? Why do I feel like I signed up to go swimming in a pool of peanut butter and jello? Everyone loves jello - but I wasn't quite sure what to expect. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I made my way to the living room at North Syquia Apartments in Malate for what was advertised as "THE RETURN OF THE COMEBACK OF THE NEW AND IMPROVED NEWLY-SCENTED HARING +UBU-L!" I had just braved traffic on a rainy Friday night, and I was afraid I'd be late and would be punished (with food, most probably). Luckily, Filipino time was on my side and I learned the play would begin an hour late. As I left the living room, I noticed that they were playing the surreal Imelda tribute album by David Byrne. This was a detail that makes a lot of sense, considering the play is based on Ubu Roi, which falls right under the absurd and surreal. At 9 o'clock, the living room was bursting with an eager audience, mostly youngsters who looked like they had come straight from school. As it is with sala theaters, there's a very thin line between the actors and the audience - if at all. The room was stage, green room, and audience area all at the same time - and the actors could be seen in the "wings," wriggling into their costumes. The costumes deserve a whole paragraph. How does one begin to describe a man wrapped in something that, in black and white, could pass for a snake, but in its actual flesh color is, although grotesquely surreal, unmistakably an incredibly long penis? Words are simply not enough. Mama +Ubu-L wears a frou frou dress, and her melon-sized plastic balloon breasts hang out for the world to gawk at. Prinsipesa Bukake is a perfect pixie - if pixies wore fishnet stockings, heavy makeup, and left their candy-colored dresses unzipped. Kapitan Tutan could do without a costume - the do-it-yourself abs drawn on his stomach are more than enough. Without any fanfare, the play began. My suspicions that I might have gotten myself into a pickle were confirmed when audience participation was solicited. I made myself invisible, and other members of the audience were picked to play the Bear and the Tae Killer. If I were a comic strip character, there would be a huge question mark in my thought bubble. There is a reason for the brown paper bags that bore the instructions "Bawal sumuko, puwedeng sumuka." Haring +Ubu-L is an hour or so of the following: 5-minute expositories accompanied by sex, all the vulgar language in the world, jello bloody battles in which, at some point, someone's hymen is ripped out, and a whole lot of shit. Literally. Suffice it to say that if you have a weak stomach, this isn't what you want to do on a Saturday night. The sketchy synopsis provided by Sipat Lawin Ensemble outlines the plot like this: Papa +Ubu-L, Mama +Ubu-L and Kapitan Tutan plot to kill the King. The King dies. Prinsipesa Bukake escapes. Haring +Ubu-L rules. Kapitan Tutan protests. Haring +Ubu-L kills Kapitan Tutan. +Ubu-L reigns. People protest. Haring +Ubu-L kills the people. BEAR! Prinsipesa Bukake returns, dies. Mama and Papa +Ubu-L escape. Evil rules. Eternal cycle. Set inside a toilet bowl, HARING +Ubu-L pukes excess filth, greed, avarice, gluttony, ambition, filth, greed, avarice, gluttony, ambition, filth ... I learned later on that "tubol" means turd, and suddenly, everything was made very clear. With Haring +Ubu-L, Sipat Lawin presents the world in a toilet bowl, but they do it with panache. It's unfortunate that last Saturday's staging was the last for this season, but Sipat Lawin has other plays in store - Imperio Animalia in August and Battalia Real in November. Adapted from George Orwell's Animal Farm and inspired by Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, respectively, these are two plays most definitely worth checking out. - YA, GMANews.TV Sipat Lawin Ensemble is a group of theater players composed of the young Theater Arts alumni of the Philippine High School for the Arts. Visit their Facebook page here.