What
would Brecht have thought of the onstage smoking of herbal cigarettes?
Would that rancid pong count as an alienation effect? Unlikely, since
he was a man who was fond of his stogie; he once objected to
King Lear because you get so caught
up in it that you let you cigar go out. (Ah, another age…)
Luckily, the same kind of thing happens in the course of Jonathan
Church’s Chichester revival of Brecht’s blackly farcical gangster
parable of the rise of Hitler: the performance overcomes the whiff of
herbals.
Central, obviously, is Henry Goodman’s portrayal of Ui. He blends
Hitler, Chaplin, Michael Jackson (really) and most of all Joe Pesci to
create an antsy little guy who, even after detailed coaching in
elocution and gesture, even after taking over the greengrocery trade of
Chicago and then annexing to it that of neighbouring Cicero, remains
edgy and insecure. Which is, after all, Brecht’s point: Hitler was not
uniquely villainous and could have been stopped, as the title also
emphasises.
Church has assembled a sterling cast around Goodman, too. His
lieutenants include Joe McGann as an analogue of Hermann Göring and
Michael Feast as Ernesto Roma, alias Ernst Röhm. (And when Roma is
offed in a cross between the Night of the Long Knives and the St
Valentine’s Day Massacre, boy, but that tommy-gun is
loud in the Minerva studio!)
His corporate paymasters include Rolf Saxon, and William Gaunt now
naturally possesses much of the preternatural dignity required for the
Hindenburg figure. Simon Higlett’s design blends pinstripes and gats
with some impressive large-scale effects such as the chilling final
coup, and also some nice discreet
touches: Goodman, as an actor given to exploring his Jewishness, no
doubt relishes that the “Ui” device adopted in place of the swastika by
this most un-Jewish character slightly resembles a stylised menorah.
Nor is the play limited to its obvious historical aspect. As the last
line of George Tabori’s translation warns, “The bitch that bore him is
in heat again”, and a glance at the current international vista of
economic depression, intolerance and political/big-business graft
should be enough to confirm it. Church’s programming may have
épaté les bourgeois of his
Chichester audience, but there is more to it, both as timely admonition
and above all as fine theatre.
Written for the Financial
Times.