Word: brecht
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...They point up the parallels between 19th and 20th century imperialism with sly, casually dislocating anachronisms. Accompanied by a rock score, Coke bottles, North American magazines carrying cover stories about Walker's exploits, even a Marine helicopter all turn up at ! the strangest moments. At best one thinks of Brecht's presentational theater, at worst (not often) of Saturday Night Live. At all times one is glad to see the spirit of youthful subversion alive, applied to a sober subject -- and looking bankable to a major studio...
...beginning of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Professor Richard Hunt, who teaches a Core course called "Culture and Society in Weimar and Nazi Germany," delivers a short lecture on Brecht, while a rogues gallery of Nazi thugs, whom Brecht's parable has transformed into Chicago gangsters, listens in bemusement. "It is a very serious play. It is also a very funny play," Hunt says of Ui itself. Then one of the gangsters motions Hunt offstage and shoots...
...Brecht's analogy, while apt, isn't always historically accurate. Brecht means for Ui's blackmailing Dogsborough (David Cope) for power in Chicago to imply that Hitler blackmailed President Hindenburg in order to become chancellor, which is not necessarily true. Also, Brecht's meticulous parallel fails to take into account anti-Semitism...
Most damning is Brecht's indictment of the German people for refusing to accept responsibility for Hitler's rise. Two or three characters argue passionately, presumably in Brecht's voice, that if more people would speak out against injustice, they could resist the rise of such...
Roland Tec's music, composed for this production, tends to work against the play's attempt to evoke '20s Chicago. Though jazzy, it sounds too much like '40s bebop. The scat singing between scenes is clearly not spontaneous. Not that Tec's music should sound like frequent Brecht collaborator Kurt Weill's, but it adds little and even detracts from the atmosphere...