‘It was a warning from history – now it’s the bloody muse!’ Mark Gatiss and Placebo on reviving Brecht’s brutal Hitler satire

Interview ‘It was a warning from history – now it’s the bloody muse!’ Mark Gatiss and Placebo on reviving Brecht’s brutal Hitler satire Kate Wyver In these turbulent times, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui has never been more vital, and returns to the stage starring the Sherlock star and with music by the alt-rockers. But, they say, they don’t just want to preach to the choir W hen the former Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi defected to the Reform party, he described the UK as diseased. “Our wonderful country is sick,” he said. “Britain needs Nigel Farage.” At a far-right rally last year, Elon Musk told supporters: “Violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.” These sentiments are expressed, almost verbatim, in Bertolt Brecht’s exacting 1941 satire about the rise of Hitler, who frequently referred to Germany as diseased, in danger and in urgent need of protection. In rehearsals for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s upcoming production of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, the cast have been exploring the uncanny parallels between the blackly comic melodrama and current events in Britain and across the Atlantic. “It’s the same rhetoric,” says Mark Gatiss, who stars as Arturo Ui. “You just give it 80 years. The second world war generation has died out, so it’s fertile ground again. The same bullshit works. It’s really frightening.” First staged after the playwright’s death, Arturo Ui tracks Hitler’s advance to power through the parable of a Chicago gangster who destroys anyone who gets in his way. Gatiss is familiar with playing villains. “Someone asked me if I’d do The Traitors,” the actor says, “but I play so many baddies, people would assume I was a Traitor immediately.” He has now put a moratorium on playing characters akin to Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes, one of the roles for which he is best known. “Me in another suit being slightly creepy,” he says. “Whispering in the monarch’s ear. I’ve done a lot of that.” But when director Seán Linne...