In 1930s Chicago, mobster Arturo Ui will stop at nothing to control the cauliflower trade. Terror and bloodshed follow. Can anyone stop him?
A dizzyingly intelligent political satire on the (ir)resistibleness of political thuggery, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by German playwright Bertolt Brecht satirizes the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany by dressing it up as “the gangster film” we thought we knew. In Arturo Ui, the metamorphosis of thug-to-politician through corruption, intimidation and all manner of brutality is thinly masked by a Chicago gangland epic wherein the young Arturo Ui stages a violent takeover of the green-grocer trade.
As an added benefit and to help facilitate discussions of the play’s themes, each performance will begin with a screening of the 2017 Oscar nominated short documentary A Night at the Garden. Using only archival footage, the film documents the 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden held by the pro-Nazi group The German-American Bund. This is a documentary that takes, as The New Yorker put it, “an approach to history that doesn’t lull and flatter us.” Talkbacks with the cast and creative team will be held after each Sunday performance.
