19:45, Tue 27th – Sat 31st October 2026 at ADC Theatre
Michaelmas Week 3
Content warning (may contain spoilers) Click to expandClick to close
References to: excessive or gratuitous violence, war
Depictions of: blood, death and/or dying, racism, anti-Semitism, police brutality
The Nazis of the 1930s, a boxing ring in the 1980s and a week in 2026 – Arturo Ui rises and writhes in this new adaptation of Brecht’s ever-timely and ever-menacing 1941 allegorical masterpiece. Set in an American boxing gym, Arturo Ui and his gang gain power over the city and its local vegetable trade through sordid corruption and chilling violence.
Amid the chaos, vegetable-wielding gangsters and sleazy boxing coaches are caught in a half-comic, half-horrifying satire on Hitler and the Nazi elite’s rise to the top. Does it all sound a little too familiar? Haven’t we been here before? Let the déjà-vu take hold; seventy years on from Bertolt Brecht’s death, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui remains in dire need of resisting.