Playwright Bertolt Brecht (Photo: WikipediaCommons)
In these days—when the spectre of fascism looms, not only across Europe, but in India, Argentina and the US—it is hard to think of a more powerfully relevant play than The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.
It was written by the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht in 1941, when he was living in Finland in exile from the Third Reich. This allegorical account of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power casts the Nazis as gangsters in early-20th century Chicago.
When it finally premiered in Stuttgart, West Germany, in 1958 it was intended as a warning of the continued threat of fascism that was deeply ingrained in capitalist society.
The decision by the Royal Shakespeare Company to stage Brecht’s classic now is to be welcomed.
It is the perfect artistic response to the rise of Nigel Farage’s far right Reform UK and the hate marches organised by the fascist who calls himself Tommy Robinson.
Director Seán Linnen has created a powerful and memorable production that has an excellent grasp of Brecht’s artistic method.
Brecht’s self-defined “Epic Theatre” uses allegory and metaphor as a means of enabling audiences to perceive the world they live in from a new, politically engaging perspective.
As we see in the placards that explain the play’s historical parallels, the great dramatist’s point was not to simply depict what had happened in recent history, but rather, to explore how and why it happened.
Actor Mark Gatiss’s repellent, merciless Arturo Ui casts the American gangster as an undisguised representation of Hitler—complete with toothbrush moustache.
Chicago stands in for Germany, nearby Cicero for Austria and Ui’s ill-fated henchman Roma for Hitler’s long standing friend Ernst Röhm. He was the leader of the Nazis’ “stormtroopers,” who—to appease nervous capitalists—Hitler ordered to be murdered in the infamous “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934.
The fall of the city of Chicago into the hands of Ui and his gang of thugs—with the connivance of the greedy and cynical local greengrocers who represent the German capitalist class—is rendered with a bleak, Vaudevillian comedy.
Designer Georgia Lowe’s garish costumes and stark, yet functional sets serve Brecht’s purpose well—effectively alienating and defamiliarising the audience from events and figures that they might be familiar with.
On a platform above the action, the acclaimed rock group Placebo play the superb musical score they have created for the production.
Generating an alarming sense of chaos and a frightening atmosphere of foreboding, the music is put—with a very Brechtian sense of purpose—at the service of the play.
Indeed, it is the character of this production that all of its moving parts interconnect and support the overall aesthetic and political drive of Brecht’s drama.
The cast is universally impressive. Christopher Godwin as Dogsborough is a hapless and culpable elder statesman of Chicago, who represents Hitler’s enabler president Paul von Hindenburg. Mawaan Rizwan is the dubious friend of the audience, The Barker. He exudes a real understanding of and commitment to the play.
The effect of such a profound and resonating production of this great drama in 2026 is, as it should be, to frighten and enrage the theatregoer.
I, for one, have no embarrassment in saying that I left the theatre deeply emotionally affected by what I had just experienced.
The closing lines, in Stephen Sharkey’s translation of Brecht’s epilogue, serve as both a sobering warning and an urgent call to arms.
“So—we need to act, not stand and gawk./To resist, and not indulge in endless talk./This bastard almost won the human race!/The World fought back, and put him in his place./But there’s no time for bunting and champagne—/The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”
