

You can’t exactly say Brecht’s script was prescient because he was writing about something happening right then, and about things that had happened before that, but that these words continue to come out of our “leaders” mouths so often to this day should trouble us all since we know full-well where they lead. They never fail not to.

I also want to underscore that this play is a parable. Everyone here is representative of other people or whole categories of people. Arturo Ui may look like Adolph Hitler, but he’s walking the earth in many forms right now. Roma, Givola, and Giri may be based on Röhm, Goebbels, and Göring, but they’re also stand-ins for complicit generals, propagandists, and war criminals everywhere. The Cauliflower Trust sounds a lot like Wall Street, and out-of-touch marks like Dogsborough probably appear all-too-familiar. The actors here will editorialize, satirize, more than inhabit.

Democracy is complicated, ugly, and difficult. It’s also precious and incredibly fragile.
Yes, let’s please all have a good laugh tonight, but let’s never lose sight of that.