Ui [oo-ey]
From Wilbury Group's website:
About Ui [oo-ey]
What's old is new again in this fresh (and fascist) mash-up inspired by two of the greatest dramatists of all time. Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is the funny, sharp and thrilling take on the rise of Hitler shot through with Brecht’s razor-sharp wit. Pinter's Party Time and New World Order paint a terrifying portrait of the culpable indifference of a privileged class, of the cruelty engendered in its members by political disruption, and of their merciless extinction of dissent. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche – from Al Capone to Shakespeare’s Richard III and Goethe’s Faust –Ui creates a hilariously comic and darkly condemnatory tale of the persistence of fascism and the inevitable rise of those unlikely leaders who rise to power by preying on the fear of the masses.
"Ui is imaginative and brave, pushing the concept of power and accountability to a new level on the eve of a contentious election. It’s designed to make the audience think about what a leader should be by showing us what it should not be." -The Providence Journal (read)
"With masterful execution, Wilbury Group manages to create a fascinating and frightening world in which we can really believe these three disparate works might coexists...Attempting to take all of that and make it somehow work together and make sense as a whole is a tough task, but Wilbury Group succeeds brilliantly. It's a lot of fun and more than a little nuts, but it is entertaining and surprising from beginning to end." -Broadway World (read)
"The Wilbury Theatre Group has earned a well-deserved reputation for producing exciting and especially innovative stage experiences, and this season's opener is indisputably its most daring and discerning to date...This engrossing production, however offbeat, makes it impossible to turn away and forces us to pay closer attention." -Edge Providence (read)
"In Wilbury’s “Fascist mash-up” of three plays director Josh Short deserves praise for conceiving a radical experiment well carried out.Interweaving scenes inspired by The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht and from Party Time by Harold Pinter, the result is surprisingly palatable....By bouncing back and forth with wild abandon, the heavy-handedness of each component is softened. Amazingly, Wilbury has managed to forge two rather bad plays into a unified whole that provides an intense audience experience..." -Motif Magazine (read)