THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI. To 15 March.
London.
THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI
by Bertolt Brecht translated by Ralph Manheim.
Lyric Theatre Hammersmith To 15 March 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 27 Feb, 12 March 1.30pm; 8, 15 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 8 March 7.30pm
Captioned 13 March.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
TICKETS: 0871 221 1722.
www.lyric.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 February.
Sense of menace survives relocation.
One word shocks in David Farr's production of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Gangster Show’: “continent”. For Brecht, it referred to wartime Europe. But with Lucian Msamati’s bulky Black Arturo lumbering around the stage, it means Africa, new home to dictators.
This Arturo calls himself “son of the desert”, as he picks-up a handful of the red sand covering the floor. It’s a reinvention of himself in a performance made frightening by externals: the change from red vest to military uniform, often worn with insolent informality. Or the hearty laughter, and unruffled calm as he reads the paper while his lieutenants quarrel around him. Yet Msamati’s Ui also has an inner force making clear what marks out a Hitler from those surrounding him.
Brecht aimed to show how little the great dictator was; how he gains power through terror aimed at the ‘little man’. Throughout, Big Business PR-man Clark remains the sharp-suite apologist and respectable face of Arturo’s gangsterism, which in turn secures the industrialists’ power. Hence the play’s Nuremberg-like public meetings and the scene where the shuffling Ui learns, from a ham actor, to move and speak big.
Msamati doesn’t overplay the Hitler gestures. But it’s only in the final public meeting that Africa gets its full look-in, with references to its recent and current boiling-points. And its vegetables. Till then it’s Brecht’s cauliflowers that form the commercial heart of the play’s politics.
Which is the difficulty. Viewed in Africa, this may be a valuable import from European theatre reflecting on local political disasters. But American hoodlumism provided Brecht with close parallels that pointed-up the link between organised crime and extremist political thuggery. Al Capone’s men did turn Chicago’s neighbour-town Cicero into a gangster-run fiefdom, there was the St Valentine’s Day massacre cleaning-out internal factionalism. None of that resonates so precisely here.
Yet Nyashi Hatendi’s shiny-shirted, poisonously smiling Givola, Christopher Obi’s threatening Giri and the wildcard violence of Ariyon Bakare’s grim Roma, ensure a clear sense of menace, while Susan Salmon is all female humanity, from smart-tart Dockdaisy, through dull politician’s wife Betty to a trapped, nameless victim of Ui’s growing violence.
Arturo Ui: Lucien Msamati.
Roma: Ariyon Bakare.
Giri: Christopher Obi.
Dogsborough: Joseph Mydell.
Dullfleet/Flake/Hook: Jude Akuwudike.
Givola: Nyasha Hatendi.
Dockdaisy/Betty Dullfleet: Susan Salmon.
Clark: Emmanuel Ighodaro.
Young Inna: Adrian Black/Mofammed Arthur Turay/Isaac Ssebandeke.
Director: David Farr.
with: Lucien Msamati.
Designer: Ti Green.
Lighting: Mike Gunning.
Sound: Nick Manning.
Composer: Keith Clouston.
Assistant director: Jamie Rocha Allan.
2008-02-26 02:27:49