Dark humor and layered meanings of 'Arturo Ui' have special resonance

NEW YORK -- Murder and fear are the order of the day. The leader of one region plots to supplant another in the interest of security. Ordinary people feel intimidated and powerless to raise their voices in protest.

If it sounds a bit like life in contemporary America, then that's because Simon McBurney and Al Pacino have done their jobs so well. The pair are director and star of a terrific National Actors Theatre production of Bertolt Brecht's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," which recently admitted theater critics after eight weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of previews. The play's run has just been extended by a week until Nov. 10.

When Brecht wrote the play in 1941, while in exile from Nazi Germany, he intended it as a comic parable about common criminals gaining power in a leadership vacuum. But with anxiety rising over a possible war with Iraq and civil liberties taking a beating in the past year, the dark humor and layered meanings of "Arturo Ui" have a special resonance.

Playing in a 750-seat auditorium at Pace University, the production has everything we've come to expect from a star-packed theater event (expensive suits, slinky outfits and double-parked limos) in addition to a few pleasant surprises (an exceptionally coherent production featuring splendid acting performances).

Since its first production in 1958, two years after Brecht's death, "Arturo Ui" has been criticized for overlooking the complicity of the common folk in the lead character's "resistible rise." As a comic parable for the rise of Adolf Hitler, the play accurately demonstrates the dictator's unhinged persona begging for acceptance from the upper classes. But Brecht's sympathy for the working class probably caused him to minimize the average German's enthusiasm for Hitler's extreme policies.

Director McBurney attempts to counter the problem with repeated physical gestures among minor characters that hint at the "Heil" salute to come. Most powerful is a scene in which small grocers lament the rise of Ui, yet no one has the nerve to oppose him. One says, "Our only hope was this: someday, someone will stand up to" him.

McBurney uses theater to its best advantage with simple set pieces (a leather chair, a desk) enhanced by rear-projected black-and-white film clips or slides (designed by Ruppert Bohle) to create a sense of place and moment. The setting (designed by Robert Innes Hopkins) first appears as a music hall stage -- complete with footlights -- within a stage framed by lush red curtains. Eventually the curtains are literally torn away and the footlights disappear as Ui's grip on power leads to starker imagery.

The director also provides startling shifts in perspective as the world of the play falls under Ui's sway. At one point, Ui's henchman, Givola (Steve Buscemi), while menacing a group of grocers, says, "Let's look at this another way."

Suddenly, amid a swirl of light and music, the actors smoothly shift their positions onstage and the audience views the scene from what would have been a side angle only moments before. It is an odd and delightful device that the director uses throughout the rest of the performance. Although this technique offers a pure theatrical pleasure, it also demonstrates, however subtly, a world spinning out of control.

Surrounded by thuggish henchmen played with edgy distinction by Buscemi, John Goodman and Chazz Palminteri (representing Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering and Ernst Rohm), Pacino is a masterly manic-depressive who whines, coaxes and rants his way into a business relationship with old Dogsborough (Charles Durning plays the Hindenburg-esque role with effortless grace and subtlety).

Other well-known actors such as Dominic Chianese, Billy Crudup, Linda Emond, Paul Giamatti, Novella Nelson and John Ventimiglia all deliver performances of unusual depth and clarity. Indeed, it's difficult to find a false note sounded by the 23-member acting ensemble. It's a telling example of the importance of extra rehearsal -- this production had double the usual time -- but it is also a testament to McBurney's extraordinary vision and talent.

After Ui consolidates his power, he employs an actor to give him "lessons in speechmaking. Also how to make an entrance." As an old actor, who says he'd be on Broadway were it not for his ruin by Shakespeare, Tony Randall gives a superb rendering of old-school classical acting that gradually transforms Ui from a slinking gutter-rat into an arm-flailing, goosestepping orator who stands with his head erect and his hands covering his genitals. In a production with many clever moments, the scene between Randall and Pacino provides the comic highlight.

Thus transformed, Ui issues a chilling speech that attacks the murder and butchery carried out by his own men. He uses the excuse of lawlessness to encourage a crackdown and to line his pockets (and the pockets of his followers). "There is a price-tag on security," Ui says, "such are the laws of life." It all sounds eerily similar to the post-Sept. 11 debate over American security and foreign war, but it is the end of the scene that truly rings in the ears.

Several of Ui's men walk out of the speech carrying cans of kerosene and moments later a conflagration crackles throughout the theater. A grocer who said he didn't need Ui's protection has had his warehouse burned.

"Wake up, you men, I warn you!" Ui shouts. "Error is human, yeh, but so is terror."

It is neither the first nor the last time that Pacino sends shivers of recognition down the spine.

After a final rant about expanding "protection" to a litany of other locales, the actor steps downstage, peels off his little black mustache and says, "This was the thing that nearly had us mastered."

He further reminds us that the animal that "bore him is in heat again."

If you listen closely, you may hear it panting.

Jeffrey Eric Jenkins is a New York-based theater writer for the P-I. He can be reached at 718-789-5553 or editor@bestplaysonline.com.

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