Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler - recast by Brecht into a fictional, small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade in the 1930s. The satirical allegory combines Brecht's Epic style of theatre with black comedy and overt didacticism. 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 of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is by Canadian theatre academic Jennifer Wise.
| ISBN: | 9781408179932 |
| Publication date: | 28th February 2013 |
| Author: | Bertolt Brecht |
| Publisher: | Methuen Drama an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 112 pages |
| Series: | Modern Plays |
| Genres: |
Plays, playscripts Literary studies: plays and playwrights |