Arturo Ui Pushes Audiences To Rethink the Status Quo

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is irresistible. The student production of Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece manages to remain true to Brechtian style while delivering its own splash of originality.

At once entertaining and thought-provoking, Ui challenges the audience to come away from the play not just with empathy for its characters, but with the resolve that the status quo in their own lives must change. Through humor and intellect, the director Brandon Woolf, CC ’05, achieves “a modern critique of the global political climate.”

Ui is a biting political allegory chronicling Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, set in 1920s gangster era America. Through humor, pathos, and brutal reality (as Arturo says, “People would rather buy cauliflowers than coffins”), we are able to understand our own time as well as the horrors of the past.

Brecht wrote Ui while in exile in Finland in the 1930s, and it seems that beyond the borders of his country he was able to see more clearly the troubles that plagued it.

Ironically, it was through this same lens that Woolf first concocted the idea to do Ui at Columbia. He was able to remove himself from the microcosm of America while studying abroad in Scotland, and purports to have seen a more lucid picture of the political atmosphere in which we live. Woolf’s production of Brecht’s play is the inevitable and irresistible culmination of his efforts.

The cast works together as an ensemble, and it is evident that each person was involved in almost every aspect of the show. There is no better example of this than Ashley Walker, CC ’05, who serves two roles as the assistant director and choreographer. Her decadent ’20s choreography and the vibrant sounds of a live jazz band not only connect scenes seamlessly, but also are masterworks in their own right.

Woolf’s visionary view of one of the keystones of modern drama combined with superbly matched choreography and music make it hard to resist Ui.

Arturo Ui runs this weekend in Roone Arledge Auditorium, Lerner Hall. For reservations, e-mail arturoui@gmail.com.