Lette thought he was normal. He’s the inventor of an incredible new electric plug but when his boss tells him he can’t go to a convention to announce his product to the world because he is unspeakably ugly and ‘can’t sell anything with that face’, his confidence is, understandably, rattled. Read more …
When even his wife concurs, Lette resorts to plastic surgery - ‘I wouldn’t know where to start’ confesses the doctor. But once the bandages are removed, Lette learns that there is such a thing as being too beautiful. Everyone wants a piece of him. And to look like him. As unforeseen hysteria unfolds, he is forced to confront some very ugly truths.
The Ugly One is a hilarious, fast-moving and scalpel-sharp comedy about external beauty and identity and the brutality of capitalism.
The Ugly One ultimately succeeds, using comedy both to entertain and to provoke.
The production’s quickfire 75-minutes seem to reinvent Dario Fo for a post-modern age.
It seems like going over old ground, from Frankenstein to The Stepford Wives, with little new to say about affirmation through aesthetic appeal. But there are moments of scalpel-like precision, as with the wonderfully grotesque fruit surgery scene, and Lette's epiphany where self-love is taken to ridiculous new extremes.
If you’re needing a hit of ridiculous theatrical nonsense to get you through the next six months until the venue’s legendarily bonkers panto is back on-stage, The Ugly One is here for you, warts and all.
Laugh-out-loud funny.
If the premise of von Mayenburg’s play radiates the pungent aroma of shaggy dog, its humour is equally on the nose.
Bleakly comic and enjoyable though it is, the play lacks the psychological punch of Mayenburg’s powerful 1998 family drama Fireface. Indeed, it never achieves the moral weight of other absurdist works we have seen at the Tron in recent times.
The Ugly One races to a brilliantly ambiguous conclusion, for which the word thought-provoking is hardly strong enough.
The Ugly One shows 'how utterly warped and bizarre our obsession with homogenous beauty is'.
Debbie Hannan--The Ugly One
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Thursday July 4, 2019, until Saturday July 20, 2019. More info: www.tron.co.uk
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