The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Chicago in the 1930s, the Great Depression - a time of unemployment, fear and corruption, and the perfect time for a small-fry crime boss and his henchmen to make it big, to seize a greater power, an absolute power. Arturo Ui and his mob of gangsters run protection rackets for both workers and businesses. Soon Ui’s menacing shadow looms large, from the markets, to the docks and across the city itself.
4.1 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Location |
Chichester |
| Venue |
Minerva Studio |
| Director |
Jonathan Church |
| Cast |
William Gaunt, Michael Feast, Joe McGann, David Sturzacker, Rolf Saxon, Colin Stinton, Liz McInnerny Henry Goodman |
| From |
June 2012 |
| Until |
July 2012 |
| Box Office |
01243 781312 |
| |
Chicago in the 1930s, the Great Depression - a time of unemployment, fear and corruption, and the perfect time for a small-fry crime boss and his henchmen to make it big, to seize a greater power, an absolute power. Arturo Ui and his mob of gangsters run protection rackets for both workers and businesses. Soon Ui’s menacing shadow looms large, from the markets, to the docks and across the city itself.
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Dominic Cavendish
“Crucial to that transformation – and central to the accusation the play makes against its audience – is the hilarious scene involving Ui’s tuition at the hands of a washed-out Shakespearean actor, beautifully played here by Keith Baxter. As Ui crudely rehearses the grandstanding mannerisms of classical theatre, he arrives at the nascent OTT gestures of Nazism. Church grasps that Brecht’s didacticism is at its most viciously accusatory when the evening is at its most aesthetically satisfying. There’s no stinting on production values. Simon Higlett’s tenebrous, black-walled flophouse setting is an illicit, noirish thrill. The pacing is superb, the mood spinning on a dime between the jokily insouciant and the deadly menacing.”
12/07/2012
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The Daily Express
Martin Townsend
“In a key scene we watch Ui being schooled in the body language of power by a booze-soaked Shakespearean actor (the excellent Keith Baxter). As Ui preens and struts and learns to fold his arms just so, we find ourselves revelling in the comedy even as we shudder at the pastiche of Hitler which, like a photograph being processed, horrifyingly emerges.”
22/07/2012
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The Times
Libby Purves
“This is, as it should be, terrifying. Brecht wrote it in 1941 as a parable of the rise of Hitler, satirically set among Chicago gangsters cornering the cauliflower trade. It is a deliberately comic vegetable, and the trilbied men sitting around a jazz trio as we wander in have a spuriously glamorous Guys and Dolls air singing “Daddy git your baby outa jail!” With referential slyness, the trumpeter briefly plays Wagner.”
16/07/2012
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The Financial Times
Ian Shuttleworth
“Central, obviously, is Henry Goodman’s Ui. He blends Hitler, Chaplin, Michael Jackson (really) and Joe Pesci to create an antsy little guy who, even after elocution coaching and taking over the greengrocery trade of Chicago, remains edgy and insecure. Which is, after all, Brecht’s point: Hitler was not uniquely villainous and could have been stopped, as the title emphasises.”
13/07/2012
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
“This is a classic Brechtian performance, one in which we relish the actor's technique while absorbing the points it is making. What Goodman shows ... is how Ui moves from nerdy thug to raging tyrant through a mixture of intimidatory violence, economic collapse and oppositional failure. Although there is savage humour in Ui's satanic wooing of Betty Dullfoot, whose husband he has just killed, Goodman gradually wipes the smile from our faces. By the time he ascends a giant podium, Ui has become Hitler in all but name; and Brecht's famous final line warning us that, even if Hitler is dead, "the bitch that bore him is in heat again", acquires chilling resonance at a time when extremist movements are on the rise throughout Europe.”
12/07/2012
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The Stage
Paul Vale
“A blatant allegory of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, Brecht uses the setting of gangland Chicago to tell the story of the misanthropic, small-time gangster Ui who has aspirations to political office. The events of the play mirror major episodes in the lead-up to the annexing of Austria by the Nazis and the language, a mixture of prose and verse lends an almost Shakespearean gravitas to the proceedings.”
12/07/2012
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The Sunday Times
Maxie Szakwinska
“Even in 1941, I suspect it felt inadequate, and now it seems naive, almost quaint. But a crack cast tear into it. Henry Goodman has bravura to burn, etching Arturo’s transformation from doofus to demagogue. At first a snivelling fink in a misshapen suit, his voice darkens, his stiff movement edges into the Nazi goose step and salute. If Arturo is still a joke, nobody dares laugh.”
22/07/2012
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