Mark Gatiss: ‘There’s a narrative telling us that Nigel Farage will be PM – but look at the people opposed to him’

Mark Gatiss says of ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ that it is ‘like a big sketch ... but there are parts of it that are chilling’ - (Getty)

I’m a natural optimist… but that’s taken a pounding,” says Mark Gatiss. That might not be surprising given he’s spent the past few weeks preparing to play Adolf Hitler.

Well, not technically Hitler. Gatiss, the writer and actor known for TV favourites including Sherlock, Doctor Who and The League of Gentlemen, is donning a toothbrush moustache for a revival of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui – Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 parable that reimagines the führer as a vegetable-peddling mobster in 1930s Chicago. Written in two weeks, the play charts Arturo’s rise to power, with events closely mirroring Hitler’s ascent. It is, says Gatiss, “like a big sketch – it’s deliberately cartoony. It’s like if someone suddenly wrote a big play about Trump trying to seize Greenland. But there are parts of it that are chilling.”