“The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”, Swan Theatre
Mark Brown in Stratford-upon-Avon
★★★★★
14 May 2026
If there is a play in the theatrical canon that speaks more powerfully and more directly to our perilous times than Bertolt Brecht’s allegorical opus The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui then I am not aware of it. It is testament, not only to the German dramatist’s powers of political and historical perception, but also to his artistic genius that this should be the case.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
We live in times in which the political far right – from Buenos Aires to Berlin, Canberra to Clacton-on-Sea – is on the rise as it has not been at any time since the 1930s. Brecht’s fable – in which the Chicago gangster Arturo Ui represents Adolf Hitler and the city’s wealthy greengrocers stand in for Germany’s business leaders – is a brilliantly crafted warning about the route to power of what was (surely it is unarguable) the most despicable and evil regime ever to defile the name of humanity.
For Brecht, metaphor was not intended to construct conundrums for clever audience members to try to decipher. Rather it was a means of “alienating” the theatregoer (to use that most Brechtian of words) from their expectations, forcing them to see the world they inhabit from a different, politically illuminating angle.
This intention explains, for instance, the textual “placards” that appear between scenes in Arturo Ui (as they do in other Brecht plays). The allegorical connections between the action of the piece and real historical events are explicated in line with Brecht’s insistence that political theatre should concern itself, not so much with what happened, as with how and why it occurred.
Director Seán Linnen’s production for the Royal Shakespeare Company gives itself to Brecht’s method with a compelling, inventive sincerity. This is down in no small measure to the set and costume designs by Georgia Lowe, which bring an energetic and purposeful cartoonism to the play’s gangsterization of American business, politics and law.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
Brecht was committed to live music as an operating part in his drama, and the decision to invite famous rock band Placebo to make their theatrical debut in this production turns out to have been a masterstroke. The score is crafted to the demands of the play, whether in music that is raucous and chaotic or tracks that are brooding and suggestive of an impending catastrophic quake.
The performances – from the frightening alacrity of Marwan Rizwan’s murderous henchman Giri to Chicago’s morally derelict elder statesman Dogsborough (representing the hapless, disastrous President Hindenburg, and rendered excellently by Christopher Godwin) – are universally vital, urgent and captivating.
Invidious though it is to highlight performances in such a fantastic ensemble, it should be said that Janie Dee makes important contributions in multiple roles. This is particularly true of her sharp and emotive portrayal of Betty Dullfeet, the terrorized widow of a murdered Cicero businessman.
Mark Gatiss’s Ui is a masterclass in Brechtian acting. An undisguised composite of an early-twentieth-century American gangster and Hitler (with an effective bit of Shakespeare’s Richard III thrown in), Gatiss imbues the gangster-cum-Nazi genocidaire with a chilling, almost casual approach to both violence and political pragmatism. The scene in which Ui (like Hitler) takes lessons in speaking and self-representation carries a bleak, mordant humour.
When his Ui is persuaded to sacrifice his closest friend Roma (representing SA leader Ernst Röhm, and given a fine performance by Kadiff Kirwan) in order to mollify the grocers, one remembers German artist John Heartfield’s photomontage The Meaning of the Hitler Salute. In the famous picture, a faceless captain of industry puts millions of Reichsmarks into the Nazi leader’s raised hand.
One doesn’t need to have a degree in political science to watch this scene and think of Thailand-based British businessman Christopher Harborne’s £12 million in donations to Reform UK and his £5 million “personal gift” to Nigel Farage.
As if the sobering contemporary resonances were not enough, we still have Brecht’s famous epilogue to deal with. Gatiss delivers it with a heartfelt gravity, ending, in Stephen Sharkey’s sharp translation, with the urgent words: “[T]here’s no time for bunting and champagne / The bitch that bore him is in heat again.” We cannot say we were not warned.
Until 30 May: rsc.org.uk
