The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (), subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the competition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II.

History and description

Fearing persecution and blacklisted from publication and production, Brechtwho in his poetry referred to Adolf Hitler as der Anstreicher ("the housepainter")left Germany in February 1933, shortly after the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on the instigation of former Chancellor Franz von Papen. After moving aroundPrague, Zürich, ParisBrecht ended up in Denmark for six years. While there, c. 1934, he worked on the antecedent to The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a satire on Hitler called Ui, written in the style of a Renaissance historian. The result was a story about "Giacomo Ui", a machine politician in Padua, a work which Brecht never completed. It was later published with his collected short stories.

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 a visa 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. 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 reciting Mark Antony's famous speech from Julius Caesar.

Characters and settings

::Source:

  • Dogsborough → Paul von Hindenburg
  • Arturo Ui → Adolf Hitler
  • Giri → Hermann Göring
  • Roma → Ernst Röhm
  • Givola → Joseph Goebbels
  • Dullfeet → Engelbert Dollfuß (assassinated Chancellor of Austria)
  • Caulifower Trust → Prussian Junkers (subsidized German landowners)
  • Clark (of the Trust) → Franz von Papen
  • Vegetable dealers → Petty bourgeoisie
  • Gangsters → Fascists
  • Fish → Marinus van der Lubbe (the Dutch Communist convicted of burning down the Reichstag)

Equivalents for places and things cited in the text are:

  • Chicago → Germany
  • Cicero → Austria
  • Dock Aid scandal → Eastern Aid scandal
  • the Warehouse → the Reichstag

Alternative titles

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", but he did refer to the play by a number of alternative names, among them The Rise of Arturo Ui, The Gangster Play We Know and That Well-Known Racket. At one point he referred to it as Arturo Ui, labelled it a "Dramatic Poem" and ascribed authorship to K. Keuner ("Mr. Nobody"). The Ensemble itself first produced the play four months later, with Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth co-directing, and Ekkehard Schall as Arturo Ui. This production, "staged in fairground style, with ruthless verve and brassy vulgarity" was in 1963, with Christopher Plummer in the lead role and Madeleine Sherwood. Michael Constantine, Elisha Cook, Lionel Stander, Sandy Baron, Oliver Clark and James Coco in the cast. It was directed by Tony Richardson and ran for five previews and eight performances. The second Broadway production of the play took place in 1968–69 by the Guthrie Theater Company. It starred Robin Gammell as Ui, and was directed by Edward Payson Call. It ran for ten performances.

The play has been presented three times Off-Broadway. In 1991 it was produced by the Classic Stage Company, with John Turturro as Arturo Ui, directed by Carey Perloff.

In 2002, it played at the National Actors Theatre, with Ui played by Al Pacino, co-starring Steve 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, and Tony Randall (who also produced) as the actor, with an ensemble that included Sterling K. Brown, Ajay Naidu, Dominic Chianese, Robert Stanton, John Ventimiglia, and William Sadler. It was directed by Simon McBurney. The Classic Stage Company tackled it again in 2018, directed by John Doyle with Raúl Esparza in the title role and Eddie Cooper and Elizabeth A. Davis in the supporting cast. In 1986, the play was produced in Canada at the Stratford Festival, running for 46 performances with Maurice Godin in the lead role.

In 2017, Bruce Norris' adapted version of the play was performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London, with Lenny Henry starring as Arturo Ui, and directed by Simon Evans.

The role of Ui has been played by such other notable actors as Peter Falk, Griff Rhys Jones, Leonard Rossiter, Antony Sher, Nicol Williamson, Henry Goodman Hugo Weaving, and Jean Vilar. and Helen Morse as Dockdaisy.

In April 2026, the Royal Shakespeare Company opened a new version by Stephen Sharkey and directed by Seán Linnen at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon starring Mark Gatiss in the title role alongside Mawaan Rizwan, Kadiff Kirwan, Janie Dee and Christopher Godwin.

Critical response

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,

The play was listed in 1999 as No. 54 on Le Monde 100 Books of the Century.

Lines from the play are quoted at the end of Cross of Iron, a 1977 drama war film directed by Sam 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".

In the final episode of the first season of Being 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 that the villains' rise to power is inevitable.

References

Notes

Bibliography

  • 1960s production with Leonard Rossiter
  • 2011 production at Nottingham Playhouse