The Ugly One (Nicosia)

Marius von Mayenburg's social satire stages a modern vanity fair where identity is up for grabs.

The play starts with Lette, an industrial inventor, banned by his boss from attending a conference because of his ugly mug. When Lette's wife confirms she loves him in spite of his looks, he takes himself to a plastic surgeon for a radical face-saving op. Transformed from Quasimodo to Adonis, he is an overnight star and finds everyone, including a 73-year-old female tycoon and her gay son, queueing to share his sexual favours. But nemesis arrives when the surgeon repeats the formula and, in a world filled with Lette lookalikes, the hero loses his unique identity.

Part of the play's pleasure lies in its echoes. The god-like surgeon, boasting he can create or re-fashion humanity, evokes Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. And it is hard to believe Mayenburg is unaware of Caryl Churchill's A Number which raised similar questions about individuality. But Mayenburg is his own man; he uses Lette's dubious physiognomy to explore the unacceptable face of capitalism. Not only do firms, he suggest, judge by appearances but we are all victims of a fashion-and-media nexus which banishes the odd and unsightly. You only to have to scan the glossies with their parade of the beautiful people to realise his point.

Admittedly you wonder why it has taken so long for everyone, including Lette's workmates and wife, to point out his peculiarity. But Mayenburg develops his argument with blackly comic logic leading to the conclusion that we would all sacrifice our selfhood in order to gaze narcissistically at our doubles.

Director: Andreas Hristodoulides
Translation: Yiola Klitou
Actors: Manolis Michailides, Sotiris Mestanas, Erika Mpegeti and Nikolas Kouroumtzis

(in Greek)