Arturo Ui at the Playhouse

12 Nov 2011: We went to the Playhouse for the final night of the run of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertold Brecht. It's always a good night out to the Playhouse, but on this occasion it was one of the largest audiences we have seen - the fame of this production has travelled widely. We saw 4 of our W Bridgford friends during the interval (Jacksons and Jones)
   It's not a fun night out.... the play was written in 1941 when the war was still in the early days, and to those escaping from Germany into exile, it must have seemed that the evil was unstoppable. It wasn't actually performed until 1958!
  This production started out in the Liverpool Everyman and completed its run in Nottingham.
  The play is a black comedy, played out against a background of Warner brothers view of Chicago in the thirties with gangs controlling areas of the city, and there were lighter moments. Of course the most ironic moment is the 'mercantile and middle classes' thinking that Ui would be quite useful to them in their money making schemes, and that if he ever got a bit uppish, they would be able to deal with it. We all know how badly that ended. The play becomes less 'comic' as it proceeds and as the thugs representing Goering and Goebbels take control, on behalf of their master.
   We are all so cultured to see things end happily, that it is deeply shocking to see it end with Arturo Ui and his henchmen in total dominant triumph - his final speech to the people (cauliflower vendors) of Chicago and Cicero is astonishingly reminiscent of the Hitler speeches at the Nuremberg and other rallies, even down to the minute of silence at the start, and the build up to a crescendo of anger and triumphalist hand gestures.