Anyone wandering past the Liverpool Everyman recently cannot have failed to notice the rather striking posters for a new translation of Bertold Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. For anyone who's missed them, it runs until the 22nd October.
The performance was visually impressive, with ill-lit backgrounds and bright spotlighting. White makeup and lipstick caricatured the actors' faces, and turned Ui into, at least to my eyes, the spit of Hitler. Therein lies the problem. It was far too easy.
I'm going to say things that will upset people now. Not because I have an unsettling opinion, but just because I have an opinion.
This play is testament to the cowardice of Brecht, both in his failure to deliver satire to the people who needed it most, and also in the way he pandered to the needs of the many by making the play an easy ride. After every scene, any hint of allegory is undone when a ticker rolls across the top of the arch telling the audience the parallels in German history.
A true satire should be challenging. It should be played within earshot of the character it satirises, no matter how dangerous a beast. It should be obvious enough for the audience to wonder, yet subtle enough for the playwright to escape unharmed.
The Resistible Rise is as subtle as having Hitler = Silly tattooed on your face.
It was all too obvious, from the demon ticker, which flickered into life just to clear up any misunderstanding you may have had about who represented who, (Roma = Rohm, Giri = Goering) to the caricatured Ui, to the persistent and unnecessary knob gags. Yes, those too.
People like this play. It is superficially intelligent. The audience is made to feel clever for noticing that the bloke with the side parting and the toothbrush moustache is acting an awful lot like Hitler. I must admit that the ending, representing the Nuremberg rally, was particularly poignant. Perhaps it was the fact that the ticker forgot to tell us what it was.
It would have been a brilliant way to end things, however, in what I expect was a little bit of self-indulgent self-expression from the translator, a four-line poem scrolled across our view, warning us that the same beast that brought us Hitler was coming back.
Sorry, where? Here? Surely they didn't just compare post-Woolworths Britain to the Weimar Republic? Oh, but they did.
If you can't tell, that ticker has annoyed me no end, particularly that bit of unwanted, and frankly unsympathetic, creativity at the end.
Hitler was portrayed as a clown. It reminded me of The Great Dictator, and personally I was looking for something more highbrow. Ui is violent, and achieves his rise through bloodshed alone. Hitler was more complex. He looked for scapegoats. He won favour by being charming, not threats.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is not a warning about the re-emergence of fascism. It cannot serve as such. If there is another Hitler out there, we won't see him coming. We'll think he's a nobody until it's far too late, because he'll have us then.
So, Brecht has disappointed me. The cast did their best, and despite a few slips on the Chicago accent and minor irritations when it came to diction, all was well. It was enjoyable, too, I can't deny that. The way things moved was pleasing in a way I can't describe.
Despite not liking the play as a play, I would recommend it as a spectacle. The ticket prices are value for money. If you do go though- tell them who sent you. Three stars.
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