Focusing on 1930s mobster Arturo Ui’s fight to control the Chicago cauliflower racket, Bertolt Becht’s 1941 masterpiece is a satirical allegory of Hitler’s rise to power. Yes, the vegetable.
Racked by hunger, unemployment and general destitution, Chicago is in the grips of the world depression that took hold in the 1930s. Yet the midst of this depression is the perfect place to kindle the underhanded and the power hungry. When Arturo Ui’s gang of heavy-handed mobsters and wheeler-dealer gangsters decide they want a bigger piece of Chicago’s pie, there’s not a soul in the city who hasn’t been touched by the growing threat. However you feel, Ui’s coming to power, and no matter what his opponents do, Ui’s always ahead of the game.
Only on The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui theatre breaks can you see the gripping rise of Ui to power, and the fate of Chicago’s embattled cauliflower trade.
Brecht was a pioneer of epic theatre and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui theatre breaks are not just about a haunting tale of a tyrant’s rise to power, they are also a vivid response to prevailing theatrical styles of the time. On The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui theatre breaks, you can expect broad and sweeping strokes of narrative, allusions to Richard III and Julius Caesar and the play matches scene-for-scene events from Hitler’s rise, such as Kristallnacht and the burning of the Reichstag.
While a biting attack on Hitler, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui theatre breaks share much with Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, which appeared in cinema’s just a year before, and takes a similarly wry approach to the fascist leader.
Why not add a hotel to our The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui theatre breaks? Spend a night in London and soak up the bustle of a fantastic city after seeing one of the most toasted plays of the year. You can even add rail travel to our The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui theatre breaks, and travel with speed and comfort for your time in the capital.
“You simply can't take your eyes off Goodman ... he is horribly, hypnotically watchable” - Dominic Cavendish, The Daily Telegraph
“Brecht's Fuhrer is no superman but a schmuck, a little man: the message is that his progress should have been resistible, even with the Depression economics” - Libby Purves, The Times
“Bertolt Brecht's brutal but bleakly comic play ... we find ourselves revelling in the comedy even as we shudder at the pastiche of Hitler ... breathtaking performances” - Martin Townsend, The Sunday Express
Monday - Saturday evenings @ 7.30pm | Thursday & Saturday matinees @ 2.30pm
Running time - 2h50
Booking until - 07/12/2013