After more than 30 years David Thomas has finally brought us his adaptation of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s famous absurdist play after which Pere Ubu was named, the band of which Thomas has been frontman and singer all this time.

On 3 October Pere Ubu performed “Bring me the head of Ubu Roi” in the Passionskirche in Berlin as part of their current European tour,  featuring electronics wizard Gagarin, and animation by The Brothers Quay. As always drummer Steve Mehlman and bass player Michele Temple did a brilliant job in keeping the performance on track.

An evening with David Thomas is never dull, whether he performs solo, with Two Pale Boys or Pere Ubu. And so we got it all: Thomas in the role of Ubu Roi himself, whispering and thundering while being backed up by the band who also played their parts in the theatrical music piece that Thomas has created; Thomas giving stage directions during the performance, explaining the audience he believes in “rehearsing on stage”; and Thomas becoming appropriately intoxicated for his role, keeping the audience wondering whether we were watching a genius at work immersing himself completely in his role or one of rock music’s legends with a substance issue.

In the end that is a rather artificial dichotomy though: Thomas is a fully dedicated artist taking his work very seriously but is also the first to poke fun at the pretentiousness of a performance like this. Indeed, a DT performance never comes without a fair dose of self-relativisation and Thomas exclaiming “It’s hard being a method actor when you’re drunk”, when forgetting some lyrics, was quite memorable. As were the three Pere Ubu songs that finished the evening, including of course the brilliant Non-Alignment Pact.