Sino si Arturo Ui?

1^st Week

February 17 2009, 7pm (Wednesday) closed

February 18 2009, 7pm (Thursday) closed

February 19 2009, 7pm (Friday) closed

February 20 2009, 10am & 3pm (Saturday)

February 21 2009, 10am & 3pm (Sunday)

2^nd Week

February 24, 2009, 7pm (Wednesday

February 25, 2009, 7pm (Thursday)

February 26, 2009, 7pm (Friday)

February 27, 2009, 10am & 3pm (Saturday)

February 28, 2009, 10am & 3pm (Sunday)

3^rd Week

March 3, 2009, 7pm (Wednesday

March 4, 2009, 7pm (Thursday)

March 5, 2009, 7pm (Friday)

March 6, 2009, 10am & 3pm (Saturday)

March 7, 2009, 10am & 3pm (Sunday)

ABOUT THE PLAY

The time (the 1930s) and the place (Chicago, U.S.A) in Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui harks back to a period where remorseless Capones, tommy guns, and fedora hats ruled the streets, and when corruption was so thoroughly ingrained in society that most would think it inconceivable to wrestle against the evils of their time. In Arturo Ui, however, the drive for corruption revolves around the cauliflower, among other vegetables.

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A group of desperate businessmen making up the Cauliflower Trust are thinking of desperate measures to keep their vegetable industry up in desperate times. They use a shipyard to coax the respected citizen Dogsborough to help them out with a loan. The gang boss and unrefined son of the Bronx Arturo Ui enter the arena, but he is denied by the movers and shakers. When Dogsborough’s dealings with the Trust are placed under investigation, he is pressed to solicit Ui’s services, and this, at the same time, sets off the gangster’s well calculated aggrandizing plans. Ui hires an actor to polish off his uncouthness, and he transforms himself into a figure of power. He rids of the people who hinder or (might) betray him. His henchmen blow trucks up and burn warehouses down. He denies all accusations while threatening or manipulating men and women to do business with him and do his bidding. He turns courtroom trials and public forums into a circus with him as the ringleader. As his heightening powers bear down solitude, paranoia sets in. He kills of his friends, and is haunted by ghosts. He places another city under his grip, and he madly fantasizes the conquest of the entire vegetable trade.

Though Brecht—being German, typically associated with political theater, and having written the script in 1941—is obviously making an allusion to the rise of Adolf Hitler, he also wrote Arturo Ui in such a way that it could have been easily set in any country where leaders are obsess of power. But more importantly, he also paints a portrait of the people around Ui: their apathy, their desperation, and how easily they could be coerced and bamboozled. How easily they could turn a blind eye. The play is not just about satirizing a tyrant, but it also serves to warn people of how such a man could simply raze the monuments of peace, order and good governance, and mangle the notions of what we hold as beautiful, real, virtuous, and humane.