Bertolt Brecht: theater of epic storytelling, parables and distancing. Brecht theater it can be likened to a huge chessboard, where everything is thought out to the smallest detail. The grimaces of faces, the movements of bodies, the change of scenes, every point in the appearance of actors on the stage. Brecht as a writer, director and theater theorist conceived and implemented the idea of ​​artistic experience, determined by the condition that there is nothing accidental in theatrical action.

To write a project “The Rise of Arturo Hui” (1941) he processes primary historical material about the civil conflicts of crime families, systematically reviews gangster films, studies the life and fortune of Al Capone, and explores the alliances of mafia circles with politicians and businessmen. He collects photographic materials with gestures, postures and postures of National Socialist politicians, especially Hitler, and captures them in the form of stage caricatures. He studies the gangster environment and combines it with the style and behavior of the followers of the National Socialist space in order to finally synthesize the theatrical aesthetics of fascism.

In Arturo Ui, Brecht refers to Hitler and develops a purely parabolic form. In contrast to The Life of Galileo (1938), in Ui he does not choose the historical field of action, does not place the German National Socialists in Berlin, but attempts a historical parable. He creates a neighborhood of Chicago gangsters as a stage act to show their connection to the political violence of the interwar era. He links these two forms of violence because this choice gives him a relative detachment. The parable serves him to better illuminate the mechanisms of the corrupt mafia and avoid direct identification with the people and the ugly situations they go through.

Flexible, dynamic, but at the same time stunning performance emphasized the aesthetics of comics and caricatures.

Ari Biniaris’ flexible, dynamic yet deafening performance emphasized the aesthetics of the comic book and caricature, and worked to farcically propagate meanings linking the nightmare of fascism to the world of the financial and political mafia as it operated during the era of the great economic depression after the crash of 1929. He staged in a modern and functional stage space, with the audience watching a long, narrow stage that resembled a catwalk that featured mafiosi, politicians, judges, and the unsuspecting victims of their respective demagogues. He created a solid ensemble theatrical performance, especially elaborate in terms of blue lighting (Stella Kaltsou) and perfectly balanced in terms of movement and choreography (Hara Kotsali). He emphasized the dramatic and musical persistence of the work over time and revealed the political and social discourse of Arturos Ui, based on the theatrical aesthetics of fascism.

This created a tense relationship between viewers, so tense that too loud music was annoying to the point that one could wonder if it was due to some kind of technical problem. There’s no way that the loud sound is deliberately preventing us from hearing the lyrics. The appearance of the performance with scenery and costumes (Paris Mexis), wigs (Chronis Tsimos), artistic make-up (Olga Faley) and acting codes of all creative and talented actors (I mention Kostas Koronaios, Maria Parasiri, Alexis Sapranida, Yiannis Anastasakis) is important not only in in the sense of an exploratory theatre, but also as an energetic theater of the myth-making of the image that Brecht so obsessively collected and dismantled.

Giorgos Chrysostomos gave an exuberant and at the same time limited interpretation of Arturos-Hitler, emphasizing the full dramatic weight of this political criminal through his caricature and subversive belittling, especially in the dramatic finale. The actors exemplify physically and vocally as they enter and exit hatches on the set, acting as parasites, clowns, taxi drivers, corrupt judges and criminal mobsters, making it feel like there is no lull in this show, only climaxes, tension, terrifying sounds, guns and brute force. In Brecht’s concept, the mafia controls the movement of vegetables, but cannot completely control the “cauliflower”, perhaps because the shape of this vegetable figuratively alludes to the human brain.

Ms. Rhea Grigoriou holds a PhD in History and Drama from AUTH and is Professor of Greek Culture at EAP.