Hitler meets Al Capone in a new version of a Brecht political comedy. Laura Davis reports

HOW a funny little man with a toothbrush bristle moustache conquered most of Europe is one of the great questions of history. We see him now, from the safety of the future, and he seems a figure of fun, a joke – almost impossible to believe he could inspire others to murder 6m European Jews in his name.

But Hitler was no joke to those incarcerated in his concentration camps, nor to outspoken German playwright Bertolt Brecht, forced to flee his homeland for fear of execution.

From exile in Finland, he observed the nightmarish reign over his country and wrote a play about the monster leading it that would take two decades to be performed.

More than 65 years after Hitler killed himself in an underground bunker, the Second World War will soon be slipping out of living memory, but The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui warns us not to be complacent.

“As Brecht himself said, it should be fast, furious and funny, but we should never forget the horror beneath it all,” says Ian Bartholomew, who will perform the title role in a new Liverpool Playhouse joint production opening later this month.

“While it tells the story in a witty way, we’ve always got to remember that underneath it there is a very, very serious point to be made.”

Brecht charts Ui’s career from small-time New York gangster to godfather, in a series of events that parallel the Fuhrer’s rise to power.

He wins the support of an initially decent politician, as Hitler won over Weimar Republic president Paul von Hindenberg, frames an innocent for setting fire to a warehouse (blaming the 1933 Reichstag fire on Marinus Van der Lubbe, a Communist with learning difficulties) and guns down a rival mobster (assassination of SA chief Ernst Rohm). Finally, Ui takes over the protection racket he had his eye on from the outset of the play, just as the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938.

At the Playhouse, Bartholomew’s Ui will begin as a definite Al Capone figure, gradually metamorphosing into the Austrian-born politician by the end of the show.

“It’s very physical, it should be very chilling – the baddies are always the best to play, aren’t they?” says Bartholomew, who lives in Malpas, Cheshire. “It’s something I’ve coveted for a very long time.

“When you’re a young actor, you want to do everything, and when you get older you realise that actually not everything is within your scope, but the parts get more interesting. I’m at the right age to play this now.”

Ui is an out-and-out monster, he adds, deserving of the audience’s hatred.

“But at the same time they should be charmed, seduced by his magnetism, his power – so there’s no pressure on me at all,” the actor jokes.