The cloth caps are a nice touch. You find them on the seats ready for you to wear in the scene in Brecht's parable when the Chicago mob organises a meeting of the city's cauliflower trade. The idea is to implicate us all in the action. If the rise of Arturo Ui really is so resistible, at what point would any of us react to stop him?
In Phillip Breen's production this is a dark question indeed. For although he directs his six actors to perform in an intense, mannered style, he underplays the comedy in favour of the sinister elements of the story. For all their cartoon limps and grimaces, you wouldn't want to meet any of these thugs in a back alley. Breen puts the role of brute force to the fore in this undisguised allegory of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
This is a point well made, but it's not entirely to the benefit of the play. Brecht's satire can be a good deal funnier than it is here. It was, after all, in this very theatre that Leonard Rossiter made his name in the title role in 1969.
Short, balding and neurotic, Stephen Ventura's Ui is a magnetic presence who suggests the dangerousness of a frightened man. But he also denies us his ridiculousness. Thus, in his scene with an acting coach, he chooses not to goosestep and, in his final speech, not to give a Nazi salute: he wants us to take this figure more seriously than mere parody would allow. With the delivery cranked up to such a pummelling level, the production lacks tonal variety, but it is graced with wit and playfulness.
· Until December 20. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
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