Bertolt Brecht’s comic grotesque parable for Hitler’s rise to power has been compared to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and there is something distinctly Chaplinesque in Mark Gatiss’s cartoon gangster. He is initially tragicomic as Arturo Ui, with his tramp-like clothing, powdered face and melancholy eyes.
But he turns truly terrifying as Seán Linnen’s production for the Royal Shakespeare Company takes us through his thuggish ascendancy, Gatiss proving his ability to transform in a way that renders him almost unrecognisable here: part Hitler (signature moustache and hair), part Scrooge and part ghoul. He gives Ui distinctive tics and a wavering accent that could be German, or American (mentioning no names).
