"The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui". Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Bertolt Brecht wrote The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui as a warning. A grotesque parody of Hitler’s ascent to power, it was designed to show how easily tyranny can take hold when ordinary people look the other way. In 1941, that warning felt urgent. Now, more than eighty years on, the danger is not urgency but familiarity. Brecht’s once-radical theatrical devices – direct address, episodic structure, stylised performance – have been so thoroughly absorbed into the bloodstream of modern theatre that they no longer estrange us. They are simply part of the language. Echt Brecht is old hat. So what is a director to do with Arturo Ui now? In the RSC’s exuberant new production at the Swan Theatre, director Seán Linnen doesn’t attempt to recreate Brecht’s chilly laboratory conditions. Instead, he blows the whole thing wide open. This is not a lesson in alienation. It’s a riot. The stage is dominated by a mobile frame that functions as a kind of parody proscenium arch, constantly shiftin...