| The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Bertolt Brecht |
| Date premiered | Stuttgart, Germany, 10 November 1958[1] |
| Original language | German |
| Subject | Adolf Hitler's rise to power |
| Genre | Allegory,satire |
| Setting | Chicago, 1930s |
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (German:Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui), subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the GermanplaywrightBertolt Brecht. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930sChicagomobster, and his attempts to control thecauliflowerracket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is asatiricalallegory of the rise ofAdolf Hitler and theNazi Party in Germany prior toWorld War II.
Fearing persecution and blacklisted from publication and production, Brecht – who in his poetry referred toAdolf Hitler asder Anstreicher ("the housepainter")[2] – left Germany in February 1933, shortly after the appointment of Hitler asChancellor by PresidentPaul von Hindenburg on the instigation of former ChancellorFranz von Papen. After moving around – Prague, Zürich, Paris – Brecht ended up in Denmark for six years. While there, c. 1934, he worked on the antecedent toThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a satire on Hitler calledUi, written in the style of aRenaissance historian. The result was a story about "Giacomo Ui", amachine politician inPadua, a work which Brecht never completed. It was later published with his collected short stories.[3]
Brecht left Denmark in 1939, moving first to Stockholm, and then, the next year, to Helsinki, Finland. He wrote the current play there in only three weeks in 1941, during the time he was waiting for avisa to enter the United States. The play was not produced on the stage until 1958, and not until 1961 in English. In spite of this, Brecht did not originally envision a version of the play in Germany, intending it all along for the American stage.[1]
The play is consciously a highlysatiricalallegory of Hitler's rise to power in Germany and the advent of theNational Socialist state. All the characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler, hishenchman Ernesto Roma representingErnst Röhm, the head of theNazi brownshirts; Dogsborough representing General von Hindenburg, a hero of World War I and the President of theWeimar Republic (his name is a pun on the GermanHund andBurg); Emanuele Giri representingHermann Göring, a World War I flying ace who was Hitler's second in command; Giuseppe Givola representing the master propagandistJoseph Goebbels; the Cauliflower Trust representing thePrussian Junkers; the fate of the town ofCicero standing for theAnschluss, when Austria was annexed byNazi Germany; and so on. In addition, every scene in the play is based, albeit sometimes very loosely, on a real event, for example the warehouse fire which represents theReichstag fire, and the Dock Aid Scandal which represents theOsthilfeskandal (Eastern Aid) scandal. The play is similar in some respects to the filmThe Great Dictator (1940), which also featured an absurd parody of Hitler ("Adenoid Hynkel") byCharlie Chaplin, Brecht's favorite film actor.[1]
DramaticallyArturo Ui is in keeping with Brecht's"epic" style of theatre. It opens with a prologue in the form of a direct address to the audience by an otherwise unidentified "Actor", who outlines all the major characters and explains the basis of the upcoming plot. This allows the audience to better focus on the message rather being concerned about what might happen next in the plot.
Brecht describes in the play's stage directions the use of signs or projections, which are seen first on the stage curtain, and later appear after certain scenes, presenting the audience with relevant information about Hitler's rise to power, in order to clarify the parallels between the play and actual events.
The play has frequent references toShakespeare. To highlight Ui's evil and villainous rise to power, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare'sRichard III. LikeMacbeth, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims.[4] Finally, Hitler's practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking, sitting and orating, which includes his recitingMark Antony's famous speech fromJulius Caesar.
Equivalents for places and things cited in the text are:
Source:[5]
There are fewer alternative copies of the script than is usual with Brecht's works, since "most of the revisions, such as they were, [had] been made directly on the first typescript",[6] but he did refer to the play by a number of alternative names, among themThe Rise of Arturo Ui,The Gangster Play We Know andThat Well-Known Racket. At one point he referred to it asArturo Ui, labelled it a "Dramatic Poem" and ascribed authorship to K. Keuner ("Mr. Nobody").[5]
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was intended by Brecht to be first performed in the United States, but he was unable to get a production mounted. Brecht brought the play to the attention of directorErwin Piscator in New York, suggestingOskar Homolka to play Ui. Piscator and Brecht's frequent musical collaborator,Hanns Eisler, got H. R. Hay to translate the work, which was completed by September 1941, and submitted to Louis Shaffer, the director ofLabor Stage, who turned it down as "not advisable to produce", presumably because the United States was still,at the time, aneutral country.[1]
The play lingered in the drawer until 1953, after Brecht had founded theBerliner Ensemble, and had produced there his major works. He showed the play around to a larger circle of people than had seen it previously, and this eventually led to the Berliner Ensemble's production – except that Brecht insisted that scenes from hisFear and Misery of the Third Reich, a series of realistic short pieces about life in Nazi Germany that was written around 1935 – needed to be produced first. His fear was that the German audience was still too close to their previous psychic connection to Hitler.[1]
When Brecht died in 1956, the Berliner Ensemble still had not producedFear and Misery in the Third Reich – which at various times was also called99% andThe Private Life of the Master Race – but Brecht had prepared it for publication, which came out in 1957. That same year, scenes from the work were staged by five young directors of the Ensemble. One of them,Peter Palitzsch, directed the world premiere ofThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui inStuttgart, West Germany, in 1958.[1][7] The Ensemble itself first produced the play four months later, with Palitzsch andManfred Wekwerth co-directing, andEkkehard Schall as Arturo Ui. This production, "staged in fairground style, with ruthless verve and brassy vulgarity"[1] was presented also in Berlin, London and at the Paris International Theatre Festival.[1] A later production by the Berliner Ensemble, directed byHeiner Müller has run in repertory since June 1995, withMartin Wuttke in the title role.[citation needed]
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was presented twice onBroadway. The first production, billedArturo Ui,[8] was in 1963, withChristopher Plummer in the lead role andMadeleine Sherwood.Michael Constantine,Elisha Cook,Lionel Stander,Sandy Baron,Oliver Clark andJames Coco in the cast. It was directed byTony Richardson and ran for five previews and eight performances.[9] The second Broadway production of the play took place in 1968–69 by theGuthrie Theater Company. It starredRobin Gammell as Ui, and was directed by Edward Payson Call. It ran for ten performances.[10]
The play has been presented three timesOff-Broadway. In 1991 it was produced by theClassic Stage Company, withJohn Turturro as Arturo Ui, directed byCarey Perloff.[11]
In 2002, it played at theNational Actors Theatre, with Ui played byAl Pacino, co-starringSteve Buscemi as Givola,Billy Crudup as Flake,Charles Durning as Dogsborough,Paul Giamatti as Dullfeet,John Goodman as Giri,Chazz Palminteri as Roma,Lothaire Bluteau as Fish,Jacqueline McKenzie as Dockdaisy,Linda Emond as Betty Dullfeet, andTony Randall (who also produced) as the actor, with an ensemble that includedSterling K. Brown,Ajay Naidu,Dominic Chianese,Robert Stanton,John Ventimiglia, andWilliam Sadler. It was directed bySimon McBurney.[12] The Classic Stage Company tackled it again in 2018, directed byJohn Doyle withRaúl Esparza in the title role andEddie Cooper andElizabeth A. Davis in the supporting cast.[13] In 1986, the play was produced in Canada at theStratford Festival, running for 46 performances withMaurice Godin in the lead role.[14]
Most recently in 2017,Bruce Norris' adapted version of the play was performed at theDonmar Warehouse inLondon, withLenny Henry starring as Arturo Ui, and directed bySimon Evans.[15]
The role of Ui has been played by such other notable actors asPeter Falk,Griff Rhys Jones,Leonard Rossiter,Antony Sher,Nicol Williamson,Henry Goodman[16]Hugo Weaving,[17] andJean Vilar.[1]Simon Callow discussed his interpretation of the role in his autobiography,Being an Actor, while Plummer explains why he felt he failed in the role on Broadway in his autobiography,In Spite of Me.[citation needed]
A production by the SydneyOld Tote Theatre Company was filmed forAustralian television in 1972 withJohn Bell in the title role[18] andHelen Morse as Dockdaisy.[19]
At the time of the first stage production, in Stuttgart, Siegfried Melchinger, a West German critic, called it a "brilliant miscarriage", and complained that the play omitted the German people,[1] echoing the complaint of the East German critic Lothar Kusche, who had read the play in manuscript. Brecht's answer was, in part
Ui is aparable play, written with the aim of destroying the dangerous respect commonly felt for great killers. The circle described has been deliberately restricted; it is confined to the plane of state, industrialists, Junkers and petty bourgeois. This is enough to achieve the desired objective. The play does not pretend to give a complete account of the historical situation in the 1930s.[20]
In his 1992 study,Hitler: The Führer and the People,J. P. Stern, a professor of German literature, rejects bothArturo Ui and Chaplin'sThe Great Dictator, writing: "[T]he true nature of [Hitler] is trivialized and obscured rather than illuminated by the antics of Charles Chaplin and the deeply unfunny comedy of Bertolt Brecht."[21]
The play was listed in 1999 as No. 54 onLe Monde's 100 Books of the Century.
Lines from the play are quoted at the end ofCross of Iron, a 1977 drama war film directed bySam Peckinpah: "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again".[22]
In the final episode of the first season ofBeing Human, the vampire Herrick quotes the play shortly before the werewolf George kills him: "The world was almost won by such an ape! The nations put him where his kind belong. But don't rejoice too soon at your escape – The womb he crawled from is still going strong." This mocks the heroes' hopes of stopping his plans for world domination and asserts the villains' rise to power is inevitable.[23]
Notes
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