Bertolt Brecht
Translated by George Tabori Drama

Characters: 30 male, 5 female

Brecht's shudderingly accurate parallel between Hitler and his henchmen on the one hand and the old crime lords of Chicago on the other is a vigorous eye opener that was produced on Broadway with Christopher Plummer. The Cauliflower Trust in Chicago is in need of help and turns to a racketeer by the name of Arturo Ui to begin a "protection" campaign. His henchmen look astonishingly like Goebbels and Goring. Their activities include "accidental" fires and a St. Valentine's Day massacre. "A wild and grotesque sort of clown show, with everything seen through a distorting mirror...An ideal vehicle for a director who knows how to shoot the work in his staging." -The New York Post

Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler - recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today.Written during the Second World War in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble's most outstanding box-office successes in 1959, and has continued to attract a succession of major actors, including Leonard Rossiter, Christopher Plummer, Antony Sher and Al Pacino.This version, originally translated by George Tabori, has been revised by leading Scottish playwright Alistair Beaton.