‘In the beginning was breath’

Declan Donnellan is riding high. His acclaimed production of the burlesque classic Ubu Roi has confirmed his membership of the elite group of British directors who enjoy renown across Continental Europe and beyond. The critics cheered his French-language production of Alfred Jarry’s anarchic satire when it reached Paris earlier this month. The show, created by Donnellan’s company Cheek by Jowl, is currently bunny-hopping between venues on either side of the Channel. It arrives at the Barbican on 10 April where it forms part of the Dancing around Duchamp season.

I meet Donellan in a Hampstead café. ‘My local,’ he says as two cappuccinos are clattered down in front us. He’s chunkily built, in his late 50s, with a large, clean-shaven head, a squashy nose and bulbous eyes that shine impishly in a soft, quizzical face. He looks like Socrates reinvented as a racing tipster from Sligo. His voice is a low, velvety purr, full of vitality and warmth.

‘The thing about a great play is that you can never say why it’s great. It’s like writing an obituary. You can make various descriptive attempts, but at the end of the day, the beautiful thing about the person was that they were alive.’

According to legend, there were scuffles at Ubu Roi’s première in 1896. Has its classic status diminished its capacity to shock?

‘First, let’s take apart what happened on the opening night, which has become very mythologised. The play had been in print for six months and there’d been a row about it so everyone knew what to expect, right from the very first word, “mertre”.’ [A pun on the French for ‘shit’ and ‘homicide’.] ‘The audience was tiny, only 100 people in a minute theatre. And Jarry had a tremendous eye for publicity — you think of Rembrandt buying up his prints to inflate the price.