(Arifa Akbar’s article appeared in the Guardian, 4/22. Photo: Almost unrecognisable … Gatiss in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Photograph: Marc Brenner.)
Swan theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Gatiss is part Hitler, part Scrooge, part Trump in Seán Linnen’s circus-like production for the RSC
Bertolt Brecht’s comic grotesque parable for Hitler’s rise to power has been compared to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and there is something distinctly Chaplinesque in Mark Gatiss’s cartoon gangster. He is initially tragicomic as Arturo Ui, with his tramp-like clothing, powdered face and melancholy eyes.
But he turns truly terrifying as Seán Linnen’s production for the Royal Shakespeare Company takes us through his thuggish ascendancy, Gatiss proving his ability to transform in a way that renders him almost unrecognisable here: part Hitler (signature moustache and hair), part Scrooge and part ghoul. He gives Ui distinctive tics and a wavering accent that could be German, or American (mentioning no names).
Translated here by Stephen Sharkey, Brecht’s play juxtaposes Ui’s take-over of Chicago’s cauliflower racket with the rise of the Third Reich, scene by scene, with mobster characters representing the likes of Joseph Goebbels (Givola, played by LJ Parkinson) and Ernst Röhm (Roma, played by Kadiff Kirwan). Dogsborough (Christopher Godwin) stands in for the German president Paul von Hindenburg, who is a tragic figure foiled by his own weakness and venality, while his son (Mahesh Parmar) is a comic foil – a grown man zipping around on a child’s scooter or blowing bubbles.
Mawaan Rizwan gives a standout performance, magnetic and maniacal as both an MC in the play’s cod Shakespearean prologue, and as Giri (a satirical version of Hermann Göring). Janie Dee oozes emotion in her various, non-comic roles. The cast, often doubling up, is immaculate alongside them, mastering the balance between Bugsy Malone cartoonishness and threat. It is all laughable, ludicrous and menacing. Brecht’s epic theatre can so easily tip into wooden didacticism, old-fashioned in its overt delivery of moral messages. Linnen leans into the lessons given in scene but they are sobering in their parallels. By the end of the show, there is nothing funny about these vegetable racketeers. They are chilling, cauliflowers and all.
Linnen’s circus-like staging, spectacular in its self-conscious sense of performance, seems in its carnivalesque features as if it has been put through Angela Carter’s creative wringer. It captures Brecht’s point about the theatricality of fascism, from the goose-step walk that Ui develops to his public oratory, both learned from a local actor. The artifice of it all is raised with stylised jazzy swing cymbal patterns (sound design by Johnny Edwards) accompanying some scenes.
