Nottingham Playhouse’s latest production, a new version of Bertholt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, chronicles the attempts of a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster to control the city’s cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. However, this is only half the story as Ui’s escalation spookily mirrors the ascent of another small-town nobody capitalising on the economic climate: Adolf Hitler.
Uprooted from its Teutonic beginnings and given a wholly more American feel – Ui, as this thinly veiled version of der Führer, is thrust into the sphere of John Dillinger and Al Capone where the hood who gets to the big-time does so with snake-tongue and Tommy gun. His meteoric rise to power in the 1920s and 30s is given a fresh feel and is placed at a distance allowing the audience to reflect on how ‘resistible’ this upward mobility could have been.
Brecht's didactic style is tempered by Walter Meierjohann's powerful directing and Steven Sharkey’s new version, whilst lacking some of the poetry of other translations, speaks with an authenticity of the streets. The production’s greatest strength is its prevailing feeling of unease that infuses into every element; even when the inevitability of Ui’s next step is obvious to the audience, the menace in which it is executed neither flinches nor fails to shock.
Ian Bartholemew’s music-hall styled Ui is played with a grotesque comedy and his impressive control over actions and gestures allows the audience to see the monstrous character lurking beneath a facade. Playhouse regular Robin Kingsland stands out in a meaty ensemble cast, ably shifting from gangster to warehouse stockman to Cauliflower Trustee.
There is a strong visual sense in the story telling and Brecht’s socialist finger poking at authority appears throughout. The opening image of a prologue delivered before the safety curtain, whose “no smoking” announcement is roguishly ignored, begins the production’s journey with the violence, and more chillingly threat of violence, that permeates the piece. The classic Brechtian ‘half curtain’ used to demark the setting of a scene becomes a Wall Street-like stock ticker, doubling to overtly tell the audience each scene’s parallel in Hitler’s rise. Designer Ti Green is on fine form conjuring these seedy Chicago streets and speakeasy joints with minimal stage furniture and the music from Nikola Kodjabashia creates a haunting soundtrack to Ui’s rise.
Again working with the Liverpool Playhouse/Everyman, Nottingham’s own Playhouse has pulled off another great production and, with three top shows in a row, it’s been a bumper season for the city’s premier producing theatre in the run up to panto season.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui runs at the Nottingham Playhouse until Saturday 12 November 2011
Read our interview with director Walter Meierjohann
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