The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

July 16, 2024

Legendary playwright-director Bertolt Brecht founded the East Germany-based Berliner Ensemble in 1949, dedicated exclusively to the production of his works and the promotion of his "theater of alienation." Now, 50 years later, the Berliner Ensemble has charged into the Southland with its brilliant and harrowing production of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," dominated by the hypnotically fiendish portrayal of the title role by Martin Wuttke.

Legendary playwright-director Bertolt Brecht (1896-1956) fled Nazi Germany in the ’30s and spent six surly years in Los Angeles (1941-47), only to be driven back to Europe as our country’s Cold War fears escalated into Communist witch hunts. Showing this country his contemptuous backside, Brecht charged back into theater, founding the East Germany-based Berliner Ensemble in 1949, dedicated exclusively to the production of his works and the promotion of his “theater of alienation.” Now, 50 years later, the Berliner Ensemble has charged into the Southland with its brilliant and harrowing production of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” dominated by the hypnotically fiendish portrayal of the title role by Martin Wuttke.

Written in 1941, Brecht’s satire on the rise of Hitler is not one of his better works. Set in gangster-dominated Chicago of the 1920s, the awkward text (presented in German with English titles projected over the stage) follows the career of Hitler in the guise of petty criminal Ui, who relentlessly acquires the trappings of power. The playwright’s overriding and overly stated political agenda actually gets in the way of his true objective, which is to chronicle how an innately evil but powerless creature of the streets absorbs the skills and authority necessary to become “Der Fuhrer.”

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The late original helmer Heiner Muller’s 1995 staging marshals all the skills of this immensely talented ensemble to focus on the essence of Brecht’s theatrical philosophy, which is to use any physical, verbal or technical device necessary to convey an “epic” commentary on society’s ills. Each member of the cast is totally in command of his or her every minute, sound or gesture and always in sync with the surrounding action.

Wuttke’s Ui is the stuff of legends. First seen on all fours, a panting dog of undisciplined desires and ambitions, this slobbering creature doesn’t simply evolve, he oozes like slime along the crooked path to ultimate power. In one achingly comical scene, Ui enlists the aid of a decrepit classical actor (played to the hilt by Michael Gwisdek) to acquire the physical and verbal skills necessary to make him more presentable to the public. It is mesmerizing to watch Ui go through the painfully slow and inept process of absorbing the gestures and mannerisms that would become all too familiar to the world during the reign of National Socialism.

After 50 years, the few performances of “Arturo Ui,” first at UC Berkeley and now at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, will mark the first and last appearances of the Berliner Ensemble in the United States: Unfortunately, the Ensemble itself, as conceived by Brecht, will soon cease to exist. The downfall of East Germany and its government sponsorship has led to the necessity of reforming the Ensemble under new leadership to follow the bourgeois, theater-for-profit reality of the times.

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