| Genre: | Political allegory |
| Based On: | Stage play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht |
| Director: | Julian Pringle |
| Theme Music Composer: | Sanra McKenzie |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Runtime: | 110 mins |
| Company: | ABC |
| Network: | ABC |
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a 1972 Australian television play based on the stage play by Bertolt Brecht[1] [2] which ran at the Old Tote Theatre in Sydney, directed by Richard Wherrett and starring John Bell.[3] [4]
The rise of a gangster has parallels with the rise of Hitler.
The play was one two plays the ABC filmed in association with state theatre companies, with the goal of filming leading stage plays for a wider audience. Funds were provided in part from the Australia Council. According to The Bulletin: "Only a few years ago the ABC found the proposal anathema, sensing in it, perhaps, an excruciating potential for too many squashed toes. Yet arguments for the idea, backed by some recent advances in quality and popularity of local theatre, have eventually proved too strong." According to the Australia Council, the "new scheme is going to spread the best fruits of the two leading theatre companies more equitably across a nation which, after all, does help to support them".
The other stage production filmed in 1972 was the Melbourne Theatre Company's The Man Who Shot the Albatross.
It was the first Old Tote stage production filmed for television.[5] Julian Pringle directed the adaptation in consultation with Wherrett.[6]
Brian Thomson did the sets, Gary Hansen the design and Sandra Mackenzie the music.[7]
The play screened on ABC television in New South Wales on February 2; Victoria, February 8; Queensland, February 9; South Australia and Tasmania, February 15 and Western Australia on March 2. It was repeated in 1973.[8]
According to a review in The Bulletin:
If anything, this television record of Arturo Ui has improved on the stage version by trimming the original two and a half hours of somewhat passionate and wide-swinging political satire into a firmer and more shapely two hours... Julian Pringle... seems to have been sufficiently self-effacing to preserve rather than adapt what went on on stage. Occasionally this proves to be a disadvantage in what was a large and widespread stage production, leaving the camera staring glumly into the wide open spaces. But more often than not the camera’s eye for pertinent detail is acutely and fascinatingly sensitive to the grotesque parody of Hitler and of Al Capone as small town paranoid mushrooms into wholesale murderer. The result is to give to the play a sharper taste, to bring into clearer focus details of intelligent production and acting which for one reason and another tended to be lost on stage.The success of the play led to other collaborations between the ABC and theatre companies including (Australian written plays indicated with an asterix):