The pattern of corrupt behavior in America’s politics of the Trump era, the gas-lighting by self-serving elected officials, and calls for loyalty to one person at any cost chillingly echo scenes and characters from Arturo Ui. The full title of the play is “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui). The German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote the play in 1941 after going into exile from Germany as Hitler ascended to power. Brecht, who envisioned the play for an American audience, conveys the story of a Chicago gangster, Arturo Ui, as he seizes control of the vegetable trade. The play is a satirical allegory of the Nazis’ rise to power. Each of the play’s characters and scenes has a parallel to real-life events in the history of Nazi Germany. To help explain the parallels, Brecht’s suggested in stage directions to display projections during the play in order to orient the audience within the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. It was two years before Brecht’s exile that German tanks had rolled into Poland. By that time, Hitler’s propaganda was very effective when it came to playing upon the existing prejudices of society. In fact, the seeds of a dangerous myth had already been planted decades earlier. By the end of WWI, the German generals and troops claimed that they had not been defeated in battle but betrayed by their own cowardly politicians. Here is how historian Jeffrey Magargee puts it into context, “If you were to identify a theme for Hitler’s elections campaigns, it would have been this: “Let’s make Germany great again!”

I asked filmmaker Steven Luka for his thoughts on the chilling note that Brecht’s message strikes today. Mr. Luka is appreciative of the evocative power of the play and its relevance in the arts and in life. He said, “Brecht wrote it in German, riffing on Shakespeare and Hollywood mobster films, and then translated it into English. This distancing effect is what makes it so evocative – that he doesn’t have to mention Hitler’s name, but through the simulacra of his references one finds a caricature, that depending on when and where the play is performed, Arturo Ui is a stand-in for the breed of thugs in power. Which is to say, it is no more relevant to us today than it was yesterday – it is designed to be a lesson, one we fail to grasp.”

Brecht’s warning about the fascist regimes brewing as we speak is perhaps in the title of the play. Is Arturo Ui’s rise indeed “resistible”? What does that look like?

I had watched the play in a different time and a different place. The very production of a play about a dictator in a communist country is a topic that is worth discussing separately and at length. In my youth, in Albania, I must have watched “Arturo Ui” dozens of times on TV. I was impressed by the screen production of a two-and-a-half-hour-long play. The stage and camera directors are both deceased by now: Pirro Mani, a well-respected name of Albania’s National Theater, passed away earlier this year in New York, and Agim Qirjaqi, a truly gifted artist and Television director died in Albania in 2010. I remember that the play was shot in black and white, the music swelling between acts included sounds of machine guns and effective almost feverish riffs as the projections showed photos of Hitler and his allies in Nazi Germany. I admired the performance of professional actors and a highly talented ensemble of the Albanian National Theater. With some of the play’s dark humor and memorable lines, stored deep in my memory, is the husky voice of the brilliant actress, Margarita Xhepa, who appears in the last scene. She walks barefoot on stage, having witnessed the killing of her husband by Ui’s gangsters. She asks for someone to help her and points Ui out to the audience: “I know who it is. It’s him, Arturo Ui….”Morr i morrave, me i poshtri horr i horrave” It is tied in with the prologue calling on the audience to focus on the political message of the play, to look beyond the story of the fictional 1930s mobster and his gang seizing control of the Cauliflower Trust from a well-respected local politician tied up in some embezzlement schemes. The mayor, Old Dogsborough, is a man whose ethics prove to be secondary to his self-interest. Ultimately, he is only the first in a long line of people and institutions Arturo Ui bulldozes through on his way to power, including the justice system and media. The few characters, who make an effort to stand up to Ui, almost immediately bend or are disposed of. “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” is Brecht’s warning about fascism that is displayed in the political machinations that brought Hitler to power while presenting an illustration that fascist takeover can happen anywhere there is corruption. The critics of the acclaimed play have noted its heavy-handed moralism.

Many point out that the show mostly strikes a good balance between its dark subject matter and sardonic tone, such as the dissonance between Ui’s sense of self grandeur and his apparent childish behavior, the absurdity of his insistence that grocers are in great danger when he has intentionally generated the dangers they face, the contradictions of securing peace by putting in orders for more machine guns. In the last scene, Chicago traders meet with the Cicero grocers. They say that they have been invited there by ‘him’. Then there is a vote to allow Ui to expand his control to Cicero after putting Chicago under his ‘protection’. The crowd is on edge and just before the vote, someone asks if they are free to go. The answer is that each one is free to do as they please. As soon as the man walks off the stage, he is followed by Ui’s goons and a gunshot is heard by all present. So, their “free decision” is to elect Ui, who thanks them in his speech laying out the plans for expansion of “his protection”. He recalls his humble beginnings as ‘an unemployed son of the Bronx”, the determination of his “staunch men” with whom he came to the Windy City to ‘create peace in the vegetable trade” and how they went from being a handful of men to “a multitude.” Ui declares that peace is no more a dream. It is a reality that will be brought across America’s cities by the power of guns. “Peace in Chicago’s vegetable trade has ceased to be a dream. Today it is an unvarnished reality. And to secure this peace I have put in an order for more machine guns, rubber truncheons etcetera. Chicago and Cicero are not alone in clamoring for protection. There are other cities: Washington and Milwaukee! Detroit! Toledo! Pittsburgh! Cincinnati! And other towns where vegetables are traded! Philadelphia! Columbus! Charleston! And New York! They all demand protection! And no “Phooey!” No “That’s not nice!” will stop Arturo Ui!” announces he cheered by drums and fanfares.

In the play’s Epilogue, Brecht issues a final warning: “The world was almost won by such an ape! The nations put him where his kind belongs. But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape – The womb he crawled from is still going strong.” In my head, I see the play’s projections of corrupt politicians who enabled Trumpism to orient the audience to real-life events of the past years and the echo of Margarita Xhepa’s voice calling him out in Albanian: “It’s him, Arturo Ui….Morr i morrave, me i poshtri horr i horrave.”

PS As far as I have seen, these lines do not appear in the Epilogue of the English translations of the play. The Albanian translation by Robert Schwartz was printed in the Drama category in Tirana, Albania, 1971.