The German dramatist seeks to dismantle the mechanisms of Hitler’s rise to power by transposing the action to Chicago in 1930 with the crisis of the Cauliflower Trust. For Hitler and Al Capone, as for Nazism and the criminal underworld, the methods are the same: intimidation, blackmail, embezzlement, threats and murder, right up to and including grotesque and Chaplinesque elocution lessons so as to better harangue the crowds. “The belly is still fertile...” warned Brecht. More than sixty years after the playwright’s death, Arturo Ui comes down to us from the past and still speaks in the present.
The task of inaugurating La Résistible Ascension d’Arturo Ui in the Repertoire was entrusted to a historical figure of the Berliner Ensemble, Katharina Thalbach, the daughter of Benno Besson and Sabine Thalbach, an actress in Brecht’s company. After her mother passed away, Katharina Thalbach grew up under the protection of the company, particularly that of Helene Weigel, Brecht’s widow and his successor as head of the Berliner. A renowned theatre and opera director, she expresses the epic breadth of this “political farce” in a staging free of dogmatism and in the tradition of these inspired thespians.

The Romantic period was in many ways a golden age of European intercultural exchanges. The French theatre was inspired by the work of Shakespeare, but also by the German romantics. The end of the century and the Franco-Prussian conflict in 1870 put an end to these mutual influences and inspirations. Prussia, and then Germany, a new hereditary enemy, was no longer welcome on France’s leading stage, whereas in the inter-war period the Repertoire opened up to English, Italian and Scandinavian theatre. The trauma of the second world war left scars, but while it is true that the Comédie-Française performed the German repertoire little, the German influence was now felt more in the approach to staging than in the choice of texts.

After the English collaborations of the 1970s, the Comédie-Française staged a memorable production with the German director Klaus Michaël Grüber.

He staged a mythical and revolutionary Bérénice. There were numerous attacks on the production, which stirred up resentments half a century old. Some saw it as a masterful interpretation of Racine’s tragedy, as a reinvention of the alexandrine verse, others argued about the desirability of entrusting a masterpiece of French classical theatre to a German director. The Troupe emerged with an enhanced reputation from this experience and the encounter with a director from a different theatrical tradition. Other German directors followed in his footsteps: Alexander Lang, Mathias Langhoff, Isabelle Osthues, Lukas Hemleb and Katharina Thalbach.

Staging**:** Katharina Thalbach
Translation : Hélène Mauler et René Zahnd
Scenography and costumes**:** Ezio Toffolutti
Lights**:** François Thouret
Choregraphy**:** Glysleïn Lefever
Sounds: Jean-Luc Ristord
Music: Vincent Leterme
Artistic collaboration : Léonidas Strapatsakis
Assistant stage manager : Ruth Orthmann
Assistant scenography: Liccia Lucchese

Voice-over: Éric Ruf, Elsa Lepoivre