‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ hits Khan Theater - review

Nearly washedup gangster Arturo Ui (Erez Shafrir) gets a chance to muscle in on the vegetable market. Aided by an elderly actor (Yehoyachin Friedlander) who teaches him how to perform, the thug is transformed into a crowd-rousing orator as the city around him burns. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, the dark allegory German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1941 was appreciated by the Jerusalem audience, which laughed hard and often, but it also carried a punch.

Ui has an enforcer, Ernest Roma (Vitali Friedland), a romantic criminal who is loyal to Ui, trusting a criminal code of honor. Ui, however, is a different sort of beast. Able to change the way he acts, Ui is also able to clean up his act and remove himself from any blemish as if he were wiping his shoe on a dead man’s coffin

Brecht described Ui’s rise as “resistible” because he wanted audience members to leave the theater politically changed. It is not enough to turn up one’s nose at gangsters who hijack society, Ui tells the audience that won’t do. The unspoken message, hovering in the air, is that only action will stop a criminal.

The mayor (Arie Tcherner) won’t stop Ui because the gangster murders key witnesses in a corruption trial against him. Businessmen won’t stop Ui because he helps them fix market prices and beat the unions to a pulp. When a publisher pens a series of articles unfavorable to Ui, he is put in a wooden box.

“Shakespeare ruined me”

“Shakespeare ruined me,” the old actor tells Ui, “he destroyed my chance to work in Hollywood.” 

Theatergoers who attended Gesher Theater’s Richard III will recognize some scenes here. Ui attempts to romance the widow of the man he had killed (Nitsan Levartovsky as Betty Dullfeet) just as Richard attempts to win over Anne Neville. Unlike Anne, who marries Richard, Betty sees through Ui, calls him out, and flees. Brechtian theater may honor Shakespeare, but it is a different theatrical proposal for a different time.

Originally, Ui was meant to represent Adolf Hitler and his rise to power. 

Working in Finland, where he sought asylum from Nazi Germany, Brecht placed his allegory in an imaginary Chicago. Each character has a real-world German political reference. Roma, for example, is a stand-in for Ernst Röhm. Brecht included a happy ending where society rids itself from Ui, meaning Hitler, and his poison.

“No Israeli can see Hitler’s rise to power in such a simplistic, silly manner,” Yoram Kaniuk wrote in 1970. Kaniuk suggested the only proper way to perform Brecht here is to polish the play until it shines. Director Udi Ben Moshe and dramaturg Yotam Gotal, who created a new Hebrew version of Brecht’s play, took Kaniuk’s advice to heart.  

For example, the crooks Ui surrounds himself with (played by Gal Zak and Shalev Gelber) use AI to morph the mayor’s filmed will into a deep-fake endorsement of Ui. Zak and Gelber also perform in the roles of the young businessmen who help Clark (played by Nir Ron) recruit Ui to make more money. 

These changes from thugs to businessmen and back again would have made Brecht smile. Gotal and Ben Moshe also changed the ending. Ui sits on the coffin of his latest victim smirking at us, certain he will always hoodwink the audience.

Shafrir plays a fantastic and very Israeli Ui. His tantrums, threats, and hilarious pretenses are a master study in walking the tightrope between delighting the audience and frightening it.

Brecht believed in truth. In his essay “Five Hardships in Writing Truth” he pointed out that “when all the networks flood us with shouts that a man who lacks an opinion and education is better than a man with a sound mind, it is brave to ask: “Better for whom?”

He added: “To say that the good were not defeated because they were good, but because they were weak – that takes courage.”

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui will be performed on Tue., Feb.13, at 8:30 p.m. at the Khan Theater, 2 David Remez St. Jerusalem. Hebrew only. NIS 220 per ticket. Call (02) 630 3600 to book. 

The quote from Bertolt Brecht is taken from The Brecht Book, edited by Yitzhak Laor. The German to Hebrew translation is by Liora Bing-Heidecker.