The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Synopsis

This menacing parable recasts Hitler as a small time hoodlum in the economic turmoil of gangster controlled 1930s Chicago. Ui is leader of the protection racket that controls the local Cauliflower Trust and hell-bent on taking over the city's entire fruit and veg trade - whatever the cost...

Our Review:

21 February 2008

It seems almost too obvious an idea to produce Bertolt Brecht’s parable of Hitler’s ruthless rise to power in the Chicago cauliflower wars as the story of an African despot such as Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe. David Farr’s superb revival avoids the trap by sticking to the play Brecht wrote.

A brilliant black African cast of just nine – some with good RSC credentials – not only miraculously conveys the epic scale of the satire, but also make the connections without hammering home the points. As Brecht said in his epilogue, the womb from which Ui crawled “still is going strong”. Fixed elections, the elimination of political opponents and the perversion of justice are not exactly unknown today. Nor is genocide, though Brecht’s 1941 Ui pre-dates (or ignores) evidence of the Final Solution.

The burning of the Reichstag and the annexing of Austria are the historical reference points in the arson attack on the warehouse and the expansion of Ui’s rule from Chic...

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Latest User Review

Janet Polson - 13 March 2008:

Brecht wrote The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in 1941, as a warning to the world about the rising power of Hitler's Germany. It is set in Chicago and Ui is a gangster who takes control of the local vegetable trade through corruption, coercion and violence, but whose fellow hoodlums (Roma, Giri and Givola) are recognisable parodies of Hitler's own associates (Rohm, Goering and Goebbels), while public meetings of the local Cauliflower Trust mirror Nazi rallies and the deliberate destruction of a warehouse – and the subsequent show trial – reflect the burning of the Reichstag. In David Farr's fine production of this play the setting is moved to Africa, though the place names remain the same, reflecting the fact that we are not intended to see Ui as representing any particular dictator but as symbolic of them all. For me this approach succeeds admirably in drawing out the modern relevance of the play whilst still ensuring that we are reminded of Brecht's original message. The stage itself is covered with sand – in this version of the play Ui frequently describes himself as a "son of the desert" - and Ti Green's set is simple, comprising mainly crates with pictures of cauliflowers on them (although items of more normal furniture are brought on stage when required). Signs are lowered from the flies to indicate locations and characters frequently introduce scenes. A fine African style score (by Keith Clouston) accompanies the piece and indeed is playing as you enter the auditorium. Nyasha Hatendi makes a smiling but sinister Givola, whose flower shop at one point becomes the scene of an assassination, the victim of which is subsequently carried away in the flower-bedecked construction that has previously adorned the front of the shop. Anyon Bakare's Roma, whose downfall is plotted by Givola and Giri and who is murdered in the play's equivalent of the night of the long knives, comes back to haunt Ui like Banquo at the feast. Joseph Mydell is Dogborough (aka Hindenburg), the seemingly incorruptible figure who is nevertheless ultimately coerced into falling in with Ui's plans, whilst among Jude Akuwudike's roles is that of Dullfeet (aka Dollfuss) who represents the vegetable traders in the neighbouring town of Cicero (for which read Austria) but who eventually cedes control of his organisation to Ui. Arturo Ui himself is superbly played by Lucian Msamati. Control of the Chicago vegetable trade at first appears to be the limit of Ui's ambitions, but we soon learn of his plans to annex Cicero and it is not long before he is calling on the services of a Shakespearean actor (played by Joseph Mydell) to teach him how to sit, stand, walk and deliver effective public speeches. And it is when displaying his new-found ability as an orator that he is at his most frightening, and never more so than when he lists, in the fanatical tones of a megalomaniac, the (real) places in Africa that are his future targets. ...

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