When Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi premiered in Paris on December 10, 1896, the audience broke into a riot at the utterance of its first word. Jarry’s parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth defies theatrical tradition through its disregard for audience expectations, replacing Shakespeare’s tragic hero with a greedy, sadistic ogre who becomes the King of Poland by force and through the debasement of his people. Set in a modern luxury kitchen, this re-visioned Ubu Roi features a wealthy American couple who play out their fantasies of wealth and power to excess as they take on the roles of Mother and Father Ubu. Ubu Roi may bring to mind the fall from grace of many a contemporary political leader corrupted by power, from Eliot Spitzer to Dominique Strauss-Kahn.