The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui

SUMMARY

A parable play of Hitler's rise to power set in prewar Chicago.  (1995 Encyclopaedia Britannica - Biography of Bertolt Brecht))

 

CAST / CREW (2002 production)

Al Pacino............................. Steve Buscemi...................... Dominic Chianese................. Billy Crudup......................... Charles Durning.................... Paul Giamatti........................ John Goodman..................... Chazz Palminteri................... Tony Randall........................ Linda Emond........................ Bertolt Brecht....................... George Tabori...................... Simon McBurney................. Robert Innes Hopkins with...    Christina Cunningham Paul Anderson...................... Christopher Shutt................. Ruppert Bohle...................... Nick Schwartz-Hall.............. Anita Ross........................... Doug Hosney....................... Niko Associates/Erich..........     Hamner Fred Walker........................ Manny Kladitis..................... Mr. Hopkins........................ National Actors Theater.......   Tony Randall, founder and   artistic director, in   association with Complicite,   London. At the Michael   Schimmel Center for the   Arts at Pace University, 3   Spruce Street, between   Park Row and Gold Street,   Lower Manhattan.	Arturo Ui Giuseppe "the Florist" Givola Clark Flake and the Defense Counsel Old Dogsborough Ted Ragg and Prosecutor Emanuele Giri Ernesto Roma the Actor Betty Dullfeet author adaptation director costumes lighting sound projections production manager production supervisor production stage manager general manager managing director executive producer sets Presented by	You are Visitor No: Counter by Escati
		photo © Joan Marcus

ARTICLES

New York Daily News - "Speaking of Show-Stoppers"

Thanks Lisa Wollney for this info.

    A smoking bag of microwave popcorn -- not Al Pacino's acting -- was to blame for emptying Pace University Theater in New York recently.
    About 700 audience members, as well as Pacino's co-stars John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Billy Crudup and Dominic Chianese, were forced to flee the theater when a fire alarm sounded in the middle of a performance of Bertolt Brecht's avant-garde play, "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," the New York Daily News reports.
    The cast mingled with audience members outside while firefighters investigated the cause of the alarm. Once they determined it was just an college student with the munchies, everyone was allowed back into the theater.

 

Variety Article (click here to see it)

Thanks Joan Butryn for this info.

Pacino 'Arturo Ui' Announces Second Extension, Tue Oct 29, 3:47 PM ET, Andrew Gans, Playbill On-Line

    The National Actors Theatre's production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui has announced a second extension. The play, which casts Academy Award winner Al Pacino in the title role, opened Oct. 3. Originally scheduled to run through Oct. 26, the play was first extended to Nov. 3. The Bertolt Brecht play will now close following the Nov. 10 performance.
    The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui plays Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, which is located on Spruce Street between Park Row and Gold Street. All tickets and memberships for the National Actors Theatre are available through Telecharge by calling (212) 239 6280.

 

Scent of a gangster, Al Pacino leads a star-filled cast in 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui', by Ward Morehouse III, Special to The Christian Science Monitor

    (thanks Lisa Wollney for this info)
   NEW YORK " The National Actors Theater revival of Bertolt Brecht's 1941 kaleidoscopic allegorical drama, "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," is a triumph of inspired stagecraft and acting.
    Starring Al Pacino, "Arturo Ui" is the thinly veiled story of the irresistible rise of 1930s Nazism in Germany as seen through 1920s gangsterism in Chicago. Under Simon McBurney's direction, Mr. Brecht's haunting and sometimes sardonic lines, as interpreted by a star-studded cast of 32 actors playing more than 50 roles, reinforce one another in a kind of theatrical symphony rarely seen on the New York stage these days.
    The opening scene " introducing a motley group of gangsters" sets the pattern for the ensemble's acting, and the virtually seamless scene changes as Arturo Ui and his cohorts become increasingly menacing and powerful. Their unfolding grip on Chicago crime is set against black-and-white film projections of events in Nazi Germany, adding immeasurably to the play's poignance and pathos.
    Ruppert Bohle's projections of old film clips, Paul Anderson's dramatic lighting, and Christopher Shutt's sound effects all help to take the audience on a roller-coaster ride of suspense and emotion.
    A scene reconstructing the St. Valentine's Day massacre, for example, with its explosion of machine gunfire, is presented against the backdrop of Hitler consolidating his power. The Chicago-Berlin parallel, which could have become strained, is interwoven beautifully.
    Of course, playwright Brecht, who wrote "The Threepenny Opera" and "Mother Courage," often seasons the darkest of his plays with humor, and "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" is no exception.
    When Pacino, as the youthful Ui, woos local merchants to his lair with the words, "Something's rotten in the state of Illinois," a variation of a famous line from Shakespeare's "Hamlet," he gets a lot of laughs. But when he becomes the absolute ruler of the Chicago mob, the once awkward and even clownish Ui assumes such a fiendish "Richard III" evil majesty that you could hear a proverbial pin drop.
    The National Actors Theater, which was founded by actor Tony Randall, has had a checkered production past, with some complaints that Randall tended to showcase himself prominently in some of the nonprofit theater's shows. But like almost everyone else in "Arturo Ui," Randall is perfectly cast as an old Shakespearean ham actor who teaches Arturo Ui elocution. The entire cast, including John Goodman, Chazz Palminteri, and Charles Durning is excellent.
    Despite the fact that everyone, including Pacino, is working for what is called "scale, or the minimum pay required by the Actors Equity union, ticket prices for the show are $100, the highest price in off-Broadway history. But there were few complaints about the price of the seats at the preview performance this reviewer attended.
    'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui' is being presented at the 750-seat Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University through Nov. 3.

Al has a night of Standing O's, Mon Oct 7, by Richard Johnson

(thanks Lisa Wollney for this info)
    THE audience loved Al Pacino at Thursday night's preview of "The Incredible Rise of Arturo Ui" at an auditorium in Pace College near City Hall. "He got a five-minute standing ovation at the end," said one audience member. Tickets for the four-week run will be scarcer than hen's teeth. "It was breath-taking," said our source. When they finished clapping, some of Al's friends - Shirley MacLaine, Andrew Stein, Peggy Lipton, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul and Linda (sic) McCartney - went backstage to congratulate the durable and versatile star.

 

Arturo Ui Tickets for Sale

    (thanks Suzanne B. for this info)
    To get tickets, you can call Telecharge at (212) 239-6280. You will need to purchase a National Actors Theater membership first ($50 per person). The tickets to show are around $65 - $70 or so.  The show is running from October 3rd through 26th I believe.

Al Pacino to Star in Arturo Ui for National Actors Theatre,  14-AUG-2002 http://www.playbill.com/cgi-bin/plb/news?cmd=show&code=112023

    (thanks Anne for this info)

photo © Joan Marcus

    Al Pacino is returning to the stage. Pacino will star in a limited run of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for the National Actors Theater this fall. The New York Post reports that the production will be staged at Pace University.
    The stellar company will also include Billy Crudup, a Tony nominee this past season for his work in the title role of The Elephant Man; Chazz Palminteri, Steve Buscemi and veteran actor Charles Durning.  Simon McBurney will direct.
    Written while in exile in 1941, Brecht's Arturo Ui recasts Hitler's rise as a Chicago gangster's takeover of the Windy City's green-grocery trade. The play bowed on Broadway in Nov. 1963. The George Abbott-directed production featured incidental music by Jule Styne and a cast that included Sandy Baron, Leonardo Cimino, James Coco, Michael Constantine, Elisha Cook, Roger De Koven, James Frawley, John Karlen, Henry Lascoe, Christopher Plummer, Madeleine Sherwood, William Shust, Lionel Stander, Glenn Stensel, Murvyn Vye and Robert Weil. It ran for just five previews and eight performances. A 1968 revival at the Billy Rose Theatre ran ten performances.

 

NYTimes

    (thanks Tito for this info)
    The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui — Al Pacino is in the title role of Brecht's satire about the apathetic response to Hitler's rise to power.  Directed by Simon McBurney. With Billy Crudup, Charles Durning, John Goodman, Linda Emond, Tony Randall, Chazz Palminteri and others. (Not reviewed at press time.) National Actors Theater, at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, Spruce St., between Park Row and Gold St. (212-239-6200) (2:30) Closes Nov. 3. A few days ago, also, the NYT published an article about the price of the tickets: $115, a record for an Off Broadway production. You have a whole month to go to New York.

 

PHOTOS

Check out Joan's page Scriptscene/RWA for great interviews/essays on writing
including an interview with screenwriter Richard Price (Sea of Love)

REVIEWS

Variety Review (click here to see it)

Thanks Joan Butryn for this info.

 

Pacino Mesmerizing in `Arturo Ui', Wed Oct 23, 7:36 AM ET, By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic

    (thanks Andy for this info)

   NEW YORK (AP) - Epic theater demands an epic production, and the National Actors Theatre delivers with a smashing revival of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," Bertolt Brecht's massive agitprop masterpiece.
    Interest has been high in the show — which has a top ticket price of $100 — primarily because of its star, Al Pacino (news), and he's mesmerizing in the title role. But the real headliner is director Simon McBurney who has marshaled a large cast with the precision of a military commander launching an all-out attack. 
    McBurney's ferocious vision fills the wide, auditoriumlike stage of Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts. And he is unafraid to think big and bountiful. The director uses film clips, still photographs, an eclectic soundtrack that ranges from piercing whistles to Tom Waits (news) to vintage popular standards to Dmitri Shostakovich, and spooky, B-movie lighting to get the unnerving effects he wants on stage.
    What is more important, McBurney keeps his actors on the move. There's not much slack time in this fluid, three-hour production with actors charging relentlessly from scene to scene. There's an almost Shakespearean quality to its scope, as the play, in a muscular adaptation by George Tabori, swirls toward its ominous conclusion.
    Brecht's parable of a small-time Chicago mobster's rise to power, written in 1941, is a thinly veiled parody of Hitler's coup in Germany in the early 1930s. If there is any doubt about the connection, McBurney uses vintage newsreels of Hitler's takeover in Berlin to underline the link.
    It's fascinating to watch Pacino's transformation from a simianlike thug, clownishly dressed in a long brown leather coat (with a fur collar), plaid pants and a white undershirt. He's a bad little-man, who crudely insinuates his way into the all-powerful vegetable cartel by first co-opting grocers, by announcing he will protect them "from force and violence with force and violence."
    By the time Ui's power grab is complete, he has been turned into a polished, pinstriped executive, who would fit right in with today's corporate bigwigs under indictment or investigation. McBurney makes that point in an unsubtle way but it's effective.
    Pacino is the biggest name in the large cast, but there are several other prominent actors who contribute mightily to the effectiveness of the production. Chief among them are Charles Durning as an aging politician (read Hindenburg) whom Ui manipulates and then humiliates; John Goodman (news) as a buffoonish but deadly hit man; Chazz Palminteri (news) as a loyal friend who meets an untimely end; and Steve Buscemi (news) as the creepiest of confidantes. 
    Even the lesser roles are filled with sterling performers, who often do double or triple duty. These workhorses include Billy Crudup (news), Paul Giamatti (news) and William Sadler (news).
    And Tony Randall, founder and artistic director of the National Actors Theatre, has a choice bit as a drunken actor hired to teach the uncouth Ui how to talk and walk. It's very funny — one of the play's most inspired moments, one that never fails to produce laughs. Still, Randall, done up in a scraggily white wig and pasty makeup, gets even more with his hammy, hilarious turn.
    The scene also reveals the complexity of the play. As the old man's lessons sink in, Ui's new footwork turns into a goose step and his sudden, confident use of his arms, transforms into a Nazi salute. Comic and chilling at the same time.
    "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," which closes Nov. 3, is a difficult play to pull off. Done badly, it's annoyingly didactic, a harangue that never seems to end. McBurney, Pacino and company have managed to make it come alive. The National Actors Theatre has had a fitful decade since its founding by Randall in 1991. With "Arturo Ui" and its new home downtown near City Hall, the theater's second decade has gotten off to a more than promising start.

New York Times Review:          Scarface? The Godfather? Nope, It's a Hitlerian Thug, By Ben Brantley

    (thanks Tito for this info) (you have to register but it is quick and free) There is a very good picture too. Here is an excerpt about Al:

    To say that Al Pacino is giving the performance of his career at the moment is not to say that he is giving his best performance ever. What is true is that in the splashy, star-packed new revival of Bertolt Brecht's "Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," Mr. Pacino sometimes seems to be channeling most of his more celebrated roles. It's as if his entire professional life were passing before your eyes in a series of juicy, iconographic acting bites.
    Remember Mr. Pacino's wasted, wacked-out drug lord in "Scarface"? His increasingly Marlo Brando-ized mafia capo in the "Godfather" films? His satanic attorney in "The Devil's Advocate"? And, above all, his personal take on Shakespeare's crookback king in the documentary film "Searching for Richard"?
    Flashes of these portraits in celluloid illuminate the National Actors Theater's production of Brecht's long-winded fable about fascist tyranny in vicious old Chicago, staged by the British director Simon McBurney at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University.
    Be grateful that Mr. Pacino, in the title role of a Hitlerian thug who conquers the cauliflower business, arrives equipped with this built-in animated scrapbook. And that he can translate its elements into such viscerally theatrical terms.
    For the truth is that "Arturo Ui," which was written in the early 1940's during Brecht's European exile from Nazi Germany, has never been an exciting play. Yes, it features dazzlingly sordid, throat-slitting goons like those of "The Threepenny Opera" and some witty bits of music-hall-style violence. But it is also a numbingly detailed and literal-minded allegory, cluttered with descriptions of business transactions that parallel events in Hitler's road to power.
    First staged in 1958, it's a work that brings out the more patience-taxing aspects suggested by the term epic theater, even with high-voltage actors like Christopher Plummer (1963) and John Turturro (1991) as the charismatically loutish Ui.
    This latest version unfolds as a neck-and-neck race between the tedium of the material and the entertaining chutzpah of its presentation.
    By the end, tedium has won by a nose, but it's not for want of plenty of bright and brazen showmanship along the way.
    "Arturo Ui," which runs through Nov. 3, generated plenty of publicity before it opened. The cast promised to be an acting connoisseur's delight of idiosyncratic manhood, with, for starters, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Chazz Palminteri, Billy Crudup and Charles Durning supporting Mr. Pacino. Experimental theater fans were salivating over the participation of Mr. McBurney, the artistic director of the wondrous Complicite company of London ("Street of Crocodiles," "Mnemonic").
    Then there was the little matter of price: $115 (which includes a mandatory $50 membership fee for the National Actors Theater), $15 more than the highest regular ticket price on Broadway. What's more, the producers originally planned not to invite critics, saying the show was still a work in progress.
    In fact, there remains a work-in-progress roughness about this "Arturo Ui." Mr. McBurney's disciplined, formal style, which asks performers to step in and out of their human identities, is eminently suited to that famous Brechtian alienation effect.
    But it poses demands that American actors known for their freewheeling spontaneity can't always meet. Aside from Mr. Pacino, only Mr. Buscemi, a veteran of the avant-garde rigors of the Wooster Group, and a hilariously angular Linda Emond, of "Homebody/Kabul," are entirely successful in sustaining the electrified artificiality that's required.
    Similarly, wit and virtuosity, which appropriately mix sinister shadows and clinical clarity, are often evident in the work of the exceptionally gifted technical team — which includes Robert Innes Hopkins (set and costumes) and Ruppert Bohle (projections), as well as the Complicite veterans Paul Anderson (lighting), Christopher Shutt (sound) and Christina Cunningham (costumes).
    Yet because "Arturo Ui" works with such a crowded canvas, too much fancy stagecraft can make it hard to understand. It's a can't-win situation, since the play becomes either hard to follow (with diversionary visuals) or hard to swallow (with a straightforward presentation of a medicinal lecture). The projection here of supertitles to annotate what's happening onstage with descriptions of what was happening in Nazi Germany (the Reichstag fire, the invasion of Poland) inevitably smacks of the lecture hall.
    Brecht had specific instructions for staging "Ui." The show's pace, he advised, must be "at top speed." And it should have "obvious hark-backs to the Elizabethan Theater."
    If Mr. McBurney's "Ui" still drags quite a bit more than a speeding bullet, the production consistently brings out the play's Elizabethan aspects. George Tabori's bold adaptation of the original text explicitly evokes Shakespearean verse, blank and rhymed, and neatly sets off the work's many references to tragedies from "Hamlet" to "Julius Caesar."
    So does Mr. McBurney's staging, with its exaggerated physical renderings of the swift shifting of alliances and its pointed use of a large leather chair as a throne fit for a Mafia-style king. More than any Shakespearean monarch, of course, it is Richard III who comes to mind, and there is a scene (deliciously executed by Mr. Pacino and Ms. Emond) that exactly summons Richard's wooing of Lady Anne over her husband's corpse.
    Mr. Pacino has long been fascinated by Shakespeare's nastiest tyrant, an obsession he vividly examined in the movie "Searching for Richard" and puts to fascinating use here. When you meet his Ui, he walks hunchback-style, with a simian slump. But if Mr. Pacino is doing Ui as Richard, it is the inner pathological Richard, with no courtly camouflage.
    Here is a purely animal presence, a brute whose hands hang at his sides like deadweights and whose eye sockets register as hungry black holes. This man is all id, and Mr. Pacino's enjoyably audacious performance is about an id in search of an ego.
    The production's highpoint, by the way, comes not with Ui's completed metamorphosis into a Hitler facsimile but much earlier, when Ui enlists a derelict actor to teach him how "guys walk around in the theater or the opera."
    The alcoholic thespian is played by Tony Randall, the founder of the National Actors Theater, who is in splendid self-satirizing form here. To watch the older man instruct the younger on Shakespearean style becomes a blissful multilevel parody of both political performance and two distinct approaches to acting.
    Even Mr. Pacino can't do a whole lot with the admonitory effigy that Ui subsquently becomes. At a moment in history when the name of Hitler is being evoked for name-calling by politicians of all stripes, any fresh insights on the man and his frightening seductiveness are welcome. Unfortunately, "Arturo Ui" doesn't provide them; it never has. It is less a sophisticated analysis than a crude political cartoon.
    What this production offers as compensation is a lively deconstruction of the Pacino persona. You start to think about how Richard III really is a template for so many of the characters Mr. Pacino has played, of how he has specialized in incarnating either Faust or Mephistopholes and sometimes both at the same time.
    To see this embodied with such scary energy and focus on a stage goes a long way in offsetting the evening's ennui. Hard-core Pacino fans might even consider $115 a bargain.