The Resistible Rise...

While we're at parallels... if you're asking me about my favourite book, I'd be hard pressed to give you an answer, there's quite a lot of them that I enjoy and like to re-read now and then. Even a favourite author would be a hard question to answer - there's a handful of them as well. (Jane Austen is among them, by the way, and C.J. Cherryh.)

But my favourite playwright? Easy question. It's Bertolt Brecht. He wrote quite a lot of plays, most of them looking at the not-so-nice and not-so-intelligent character traits and acts of human beings. He's the inventor, so to say, of the style of the Epic Theatre, intended to get people to think about what they see on stage, instead of just getting drawn in and getting pulled along.

My favourite piece is the Threepenny Opera, which is one (if not the) of his most upbeat pieces. (Also has great music.) But he also wrote something very relevant to today's developments: "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", which is a parable to the rise of Hitler. In case you're interested, there's the full play online, in a version brought onto stage by the CSU Theatre Production:

I only looked at a few of the scenes, but it looks good to me. Brecht-good, which means scary, in this case... There's also music, and dancing, and good costumes, and a lot of very obvious parallels to what we'd prefer to never have again.

If you watch it, I hope you enjoy it - do let me know in the comments what you think about it!