Giorgos Chrysostomou gave an exuberant and at the same time limited interpretation of Arturos – Hitler.
Bertolt Brecht: theater of epic narration, parable and distancing. The Brechtian theater it can be likened to a huge chessboard, where everything is thought out in depth, down to the last detail. The grimaces of the faces, the movements of the bodies, the change of scenes, every point of the appearance of the actors on stage. Brecht, as a writer, director and theater theorist, conceived and implemented the idea of an artistic experience defined by the condition that nothing in the theatrical act is accidental.
For writing the project “The Rise of Arturo Ui” (1941) he processes a primary historical material about the civil conflicts of the underworld families, systematically watches gangster films, studies the life and state of Al Capone and investigates the alliances of mafia circles with politicians and businessmen. He collects photographic material with the gestures, poses and postures of National Socialist politicians, especially Hitler, and captures them as stage caricatures. He studies the gangster milieu and combines it with the style and behavior of the followers of the National Socialist space to finally synthesize the theatricality of the aesthetics of fascism.
In “Arturo Ui” Brecht refers to Hitler and elaborates a purely parabolic form. Unlike “The Life of Galileo” (1938), in “Ui” he does not choose the historical field of action, he does not place the German National Socialists in Berlin, but attempts a historical parable. He creates as a stage action the area of Chicago gangsters to show their relationship with the political violence of the interwar era. He associates these two forms of violence because this choice allows him a relative detachment. The parable serves him to better highlight the mechanisms of the corrupt mafia and to avoid direct identification with the persons and the disgusting situations they experience.
Flexible, dynamic but also deafening, the performance emphasized the aesthetics of comics and caricature.
Flexible, dynamic but also deafening, the performance of Ari Biniaris emphasized the aesthetics of comics and caricature and worked on the farcical diffusion of meanings that connect the nightmare of fascism to the world of the financial and political mafia, as it operated in the era of the great economic depression after the Crash of 1929. He directed in a modern and functional stage space, with the audience facing the long, narrow stage that resembled a catwalk showing mobsters, politicians, judges and the unsuspecting victims of the respective demagogues. He created a substantial ensemble theater performance, particularly curated in terms of blue lighting (Stella Kaltsou) and perfectly balanced in terms of movement and choreography (Hara Kotsali). It highlighted the dramatic and musical durability of the work over time and revealed the political and social discourse of Arturos Ui based on the theatrical aesthetics of fascism.
It created an intense viewer-audience relationship, so intense that the overly loud music was annoying to the point where one wonders if it was due to some technical problem. It is impossible for the loud sound to deliberately block us from hearing the lyrics of the songs. The appearance of the show with the sets and costumes (Paris Mexis), the wigs (Chronis Tzimos), the artistic make-up (Olga Falei) and the acting codes of all the imaginative and talented actors (I mention Kostas Koronaios, Maria Parasiri, Alexia Sapranidou, Yiannis Anastasakis) is important not only in the sense of a research theater but also as an energetic myth-making theater of the image that Brecht so obsessively assembled and disassembled.
Giorgos Chrysostomou gave an exuberant and at the same time limited interpretation of Arturos – Hitler, emphasizing all the dramatic weight of this political criminal through his caricature and subversive diminution, especially in the dramatic finale. The actors illustrate physically and vocally, entering and exiting the trapdoors of the set, acting as vermin, clowns, cabbies, corrupt judges and criminal mobsters, giving the feeling that this show has no lulls but only climaxes, tensions, terrifying sounds, pistols and brute force. In the Brechtian conception the mafia controls the traffic of vegetables but is unable to fully control the “cauliflower”, perhaps because the shape of this vegetable alludes figuratively to the human brain.
Mrs. Rhea Grigoriou holds a doctorate in History – Drama at AUTH, professor at the “Greek Culture” department of EAP.