Saturday, March 29, 2025

Arturo Ui on Broadway in 1963

by: A Longtime Reader
to: add1dda@aol.com <add1dda@aol.com>
sent: saturday, march 29, 2025 at 07:13:36 p.m. edt

Arturo Ui on broadway in 1963

Dear Mr. Stix,

Since you were reminiscing about your early theater-going experiences, here's mine:

A couple of my high school teachers were big fans of Bertolt Brecht. (One of them even gave me a book of his essays, "Brecht on Theatre," as a graduation prize.) Accordingly I eagerly attended a preview matinee with my mom of the Broadway production of his play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in November 1963. The show's opening was much balleyhooed at the time, being its first U.S. production. Brecht had written it back in 1941 while he was in Finland* awaiting his departure for the United States after having bounced around various European cities since leaving Germany in 1933. Arturo Ui was a thinly-veiled allegory (very thinly veiled) about the rise of Hitler, set in gangland Chicago of the 1930s. Brecht envisioned an American audience for it--which never happened until 1963 and later.

I didn't realize at the time how important the people involved in the show were, or would soon be: David Merrick, the producer; Tony Richardson, the director (this around the time that Tom Jones was being released to movie theaters); Jule Styne the composer of incidental music; and handsome Christopher Plummer, age 33, as the lead (with Elisha Cook in a secondary role). Plummer was to star with Julie Andrew in The Sound of Music two years later in 1965.

As it turned out, the show bombed at the box-office, lasting only four days after its official premiere. I always enjoyed going to the theater in New York, whatever the quality of the play, but I don't remember much about this production except for one electrifying moment at the end when Plummer/Ui stands up and, remaining rigid, gives a Nazi salute to signify that Arturo Ui's moment has come. That was magical. I had no doubt that Plummer was headed for bigger things and that I would want to see them.

*If I were David Cole, I'd be making a bad joke about Brecht going "from the Finland Station" (with apologies to Edmund Wilson).



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just seeing the names mentioned,tells us how far we've declined,not only in the United States,but the world--as an interesting,creative people.

--GRA

Saturday, March 29, 2025 at 8:16:00 PM EDT

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