The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

About this event

Christian Weise's production turns the Schauspielhaus into a black-and-white comic strip come to life. A wooden wall serves as a projection screen for a live-filmed gangster Chicago, while the cast – in outlandish costumes – moves between painted sets and real camera feeds. Jens Dohle provides thundering percussion and shimmering keyboards from a one-man orchestra pit, creating a “theatre film” that appears in real time before your eyes. Behind the cartoonish satire lies a razor-sharp look at how fascism rises through manipulation, corruption, and ordinary people's complicity. As Brecht’s allegory unfolds, Arturo Ui – a petty cauliflower-trade thug – climbs toward total power. The evening delivers both opulent entertainment and an uncomfortable reminder that the “banality of evil” is never a closed chapter.