Review The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui

A World War II play written when Bertolt Brecht fled to the US is still a potent analysis of dictatorship, but Peter Barker wonders if a new adaptation's jokey approach and Trump analogy lessens its impact. 

The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui
by Bertolt Brecht  

Market Forces
https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/ 

Bertolt Brecht wrote The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in 1941 during wartime exile from Germany in the United Sates. Last year, we had the National Theatre's take on Brecht and Kurt Weil's 1920s' musical critique of capitalism, The Threepenny Opera. 

Now, after a new wave of crowd-pleasing demagogues and fake news has crashed on the shores of Western democracies, director Simon Evans and adaptor Bruce Norris have turned again to Brecht in an attempt to drew their own analogy with our times.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui presents fascism as gangster-like capitalism, with Lenny Henry in the title role. The play’s premise is easy to understand: it’s an allegory of the rise of the 20th century’s not-so-great dictator.

Market trader Ui is Hitler who, using and destroying the corrupt Cauliflower Trust, takes control. Among his henchmen and victims are Ernesto Roma (Giles Terera)  representing Hitler's ally and then rival Ernst Röhm. Givola (Guy Rhys) is Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Betty Dullfeet (Justine Mitchell) is Engelbert Dollfuß, assassinated Austrian Chancellor,  and  deceitful, profiteering Trust chief Dogsborough (Michael Pennington) is the Prussian junker president, Paul von Hindenburg.

The play catalogues the rise of  Ui and asks the question -- what should we do to stop history repeating itself, once more, as tragedy?

In fact, this staging poses that question to the audience very directly. There is a great deal of audience participation, with members co-opted to play arsonists, those assassinated, a rigged jury, a dead body, a framed innocent and other victims.

There are genuinely horrible, as well as horribly funny, moments; as Henry’s Ui is coached on diction and stance by an actor (Tom Edden), it is chilling to see how Ui picks up the gestures and stance of the Berchtesgarden bully. It is not at all subtle. It is a screaming political allegory repeated again and again and again.

And that is how it should be, in my opinion. Not comfortable, but something resembling a physical assault by a bully armed with a cosh and a knuckleduster.

This production achieves that punch, to its credit. My only reservation is that this version of the play is a bit too much fun; it is almost too good-natured in places. Perhaps even, dare I say it, too English, needing more sourness and anger. The National’s Threepenny Opera last year had the same feeling about it -- it was too nice at times.

Henry as Ui leads the rest of the ensemble cast. He convinces at beginning as the slouching rough beast, who slyly takes a mile when barely an inch is offered and gives in return lies and violence. He also has bags of charisma.

The Donmar is transformed by Peter McKintosh’s intricate, detailed set into a Chicago speakeasy where the audience is seated on saloon chairs on all sides. It’s theatre in the round and a few chairs, benches and tables are used at various times for the different scenes.

Yet the production makes one serious mistake. It directly links Donald Trump and Hitler.

Many may see Trump as a liar, a bully, an incompetent, a misogynist, a racist, a narcissist, a demagogue, a chauvinist, a failed businessman, an evil spirit conjured up through media manipulation, a urophile  -- but he is not Hitler, and I don’t believe it aids public understanding of Trump to liken him to the Nazi dictator.

Perhaps there is a danger now that Trump has become too easy, and too often an inaccurate,  shorthand which in this case diverts attention from Brecht's bruising analysis of the circumstances which brought Hitler to power.

While not an unflawed production, this version of the Brechtian classic has an undoubtedly visceral Arturo Ui in Lenny Henry and merits a green light.

Review The Inn At Lydda

The Inn At Lydda
by John Wolfson

Citizen Caesar
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/

Ah, better late than never, TLT and her automotive sidekick had the immense pleasure of attending for the first time the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse the intimate wood-panelled, candle-lit indoor theatre adjacently attached to the main Globe theatre.

The occasion was The Inn At Lydda, a 1999 play by American John Wolfson -  picking up from a hint in  New Testament Apocrypha - which imagines a meeting between the emperor Tiberius (Stephen Boxer) and Jesus (Samuel Collings) at a Judean hostelry.

Influenced by Jean Giraudoux's La Guerre De Troie N'Aura Pas Lieu (an A level set text for TLT which has entered her thoughts lately as being due a modern translation!), the play even more obviously is a Shavian-like riff with traces of Shakespeare with echoes near the end of Chekhov. But you don't need to know all this to enjoy the mix of serious reflection and light touch Pythonesque/Carry On humour.

The three wise men, Balthasar (Richard Bremmer), Caspar (Joseph Marcell) and Melchior (Kevin Moore) have been on the road for thiry three years and now find themselves once again about to encounter Jesus, an  "old friend in trouble".

 The word resurrection is never used - there are only ambiguously supernatural or magical events with simple but effective use of the beeswax candle chandeliers rising and falling and often subtle music composed by Nick Powell..

Jesus is also the object of the despotic but dying Emperor Tiberius's voyage. The Imperial ruler has left his island retreat, dragging along his physician cum astronomer cum magician Thrysullus (David Cardy) in the hope that the Judean healer will give him a new lease of life.

Here, there and roundabout lurks the dark brooding red-swathed figure of apostle John (Matthew Romain) swinging round the pillars, not bringing the good news of the Gospel but the dire apocolyptic predictions of Revelations.

Yet everyone is cut adrift by the actions of one Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem who has carried out run of the mill executions to stop perceived threats to the Roman Empire. Everyone except Caligula (Philip Cumbus) who like some latter day pop star is doing a "singing tour of Europe", ordering sex on tap from both sexes and waiting for his chance to fill Tiberius's sandals and be "elected" by the Senate.

It could have been a heavy handed clunky mix of the serious and the comic. Yet it's directed iwth a delicate touch by Andy Jordan and somehow works in a fluent production which manages to bring tension to pre-destined events including in the words of the play "the come back" of Jesus.

At the same time, there's enough clarity,  characterfulness and coherence in the carefully-crafted text to bring thoughtfulness, reversals and conundrums with a distinctly modern tinge. It may be a slight play but it's an amber/green light for an enjoyable and thoughtful evening.