Brecht's 'Arturo Ui' in Delaware (1st review)

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht's 1941 Hitler parable set within a fictionalized Chicago underworld, is easily resistible. I mean, resistible in that you see it coming a mile away— that is, until the first chords of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" tickle the keyboard, and then you realize how truly compromised you actually are.

Sure, you are momentarily seduced by the gangsters dressed to the nines in their three-piece suites and fedoras, which call out to your inner Mack the Knife, Michael Corleone, Scarface, Hannibal Lecter and Tony Soprano. Yes, as an American you secretly admire these self-made men, but you can distinguish your fictionalized love for the real thing, if you ever met it. And yes, it's uncanny how those long black leather coats, which are so stylish— especially when framed in colors of red and black— can appear so sexy on both gangsters and Nazis. But you know the difference and you resist.

But when that "Powerhouse" song starts to emanate from music director Linda Henderson's piano, you know you're doomed. The familiar gangster story and Hitler fable that you thought you could control are unleashed by the soundtrack.

Creepy cabaret

"Powerhouse" is the assembly-line musical sample used in many of the classic Looney Tunes cartoon shorts from the 1940s. It's as American as apple pie, and once it's injected into the performance we return to our halcyon childhood days, except this time we must watch as Adolf Hitler and Tony Soprano are constructed before our willing eyes. Man, this is one creepy cabaret show.

Creepiest of all is Carine Montbertrand in the title role of Arturo Ui, the poor son of Brooklyn who climbs his way up the Chicago power structure to become Cauliflower King. Reprising her role from Heinz-Uwe Haus's original 1997 adaptation (also at the University of Delaware), Montbertrand is a walking cartoon, a sadistic killer clown who lurches and slithers across the other characters, the stage, and the audience. She easily competes with the other great Uis of recent vintage (Antony Sher, London, 1991; John Turturro, New York, 1991; Martin Wuttke, Berlin, 1995; Al Pacino, New York, 2002; Scot McKenzie, Washington, D.C., 2006).

Animated sewage

We first meet this "animated piece of sewage" (a line I think I stole from Ben Brantley of the New York Times) literally coming from beneath the stage; then we watch as she coils her snake-like body around the dying old political leader, Dogsborough. Later, when Ui needs to improve his diction and gait, we see him receive lessons from an old actor who shows him how to act and talk like a great actor / dictator, channeling Shakespeare and Stanislavski into proto-goosesteps and a raised-arm "Heil!" In any Ui production this is always the showstopper, and this production sets it up and pulls it off beautifully.


By the end, Montbertrand has transformed Ui into a passable, charismatic, political character, dressed sharply in a three-piece white suit, addressing the audience as if it were a political convention. As the balloons rain down on us and the characters command us to sing, we glance at the transfigured Arturo Ui, as if he were the MVP of the Super Bowl, and we feel a vague nausea. When are we supposed to be seduced and when are we supposed to resist? Did we miss it? Is it too late?

Expert ensemble

Fortunately, the conflict between seduction and resistance is negotiated expertly by the ensemble. Under the guidance of director Uwe Haus, one of the great practitioners of Brechtian Theater over the last 30 years, the actors move seamlessly from stage to auditorium to orchestra pit. The actors also negotiate a series of interludes developed in rehearsal by the actors themselves"“ exercises in understanding what Brecht would call the layers of gestus, or big ideas that animate the play. With all their running around, you come to appreciate the functional minimalism of both the stage design (William Browning) and costume design (Andrea Barrier): Both illuminate without getting in the way.

Americans have a tough time with parables. We like the entertainment value but don't like the didactic tone. We don't like finger-pointers, especially if they're eggheads who smell of some type of communitarian spirit. Yet Americans also constantly play the "Hitler Card" in our public discourse. Liberal or conservative, it doesn't seem to matter: The Hitler label has been pinned on Barack Obama and George W. Bush alike. So, maybe it's a good idea to check in with our parables every now and then. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui strikes me as a good place to start.&diams


To read another review by A.Q. Torby, click here.