Set in 1930’s Chicago, a Tony Soprano/Al Capone-like figure named Arturo Ui, is a crazy but totally charismatic gangster bent on gaining power at all costs in this wickedly funny and savage satire.
Mobster Arturo Ui will stop at nothing to control the cauliflower trade. Terror and bloodshed follow. Can anyone stop him? Brecht’s skewering of Adolf Hitler and totalitarianism is given renewed significance in a production directed by John Doyle. Written in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble’s greatest box office successes.
In the epilogue, Brecht acknowledges that the world fought back and got rid of this threat, this dreadful tyrant [Hitler]. But with the final line – "the beast that bore him is in heat again" – is Brecht’s warning.
