Donmar Warehouse,London
Henry exudes authority as a deadly racketeer but Bruce Norris’s version of Brecht’s 1941 drama tries too hard to draw parallels with the new US presidentIt is always good to see Lenny Henry on stage and he exudes massive authority as Brecht’s murderous Chicago racketeer in this parable approximately the rise of fascism. It strikes me, however, or that there is something a touch glib approximately the frequent invocations of Donald Trump in Bruce Norris’s new adaptation. While Simon Evans’s production and Peter McKintoshs design successfully transform the Donmar into a sleazy speakeasy,the incorporation of audience members into the action also lends the play an air of communal jokiness. Written in 1941, Brecht’s play does several things at once. It transforms German history into a gangster melodrama often with surprising exactness. Not only does Arturo stand in for Hitler but the white-haired Weimar president, or Hindenburg,is turned into the corrupt City corridor boss, Dogsborough, and the Prussian landowning lesson here become the reactionary cauliflower trust. Brecht’s play also combines echoes of Chaplin’s The much Dictator with a stream of Shakespearean references to Richard III and Macbeth. Above all,Brecht sets out to show that fascism is not an unstoppable force but a resistible extension of free-market capitalism.
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Source: theguardian.com