The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

The cheapest venue for tickets for The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in the Duchess Theatre, was, as so often before, lastminute.com. Bless their little hearts.. you see, they charge according to the section of the theatre that you book for, but then they leave it up to the theatre to decide where to actually put you. And if it happens that that part of the theatre is undersubscribed, they're likely to upgrade you. And so it came to pass that, this evening, having booked to sit in the rafters, at the back of the dress circle, I found myself instead handed a ticket for an aisle seat in Row D of the stalls. Fourth row from the stage. V nice indeed! And that means that I paid £22 for a ticket that would have cost over £40 from lastminute.com, or perhaps up to £65 from the venue itself. Tip: always book the cheapest ticket that would be acceptable to you. They're also more likely to be upgraded..

Many of the actors double as musicians for the start of the show. Now, this is a gangster play that rapidly morphs into a satire on the rise of Hitler. Written by Brecht in 1941, as they say, it would have been incendiary if it had been performed at the time, but actually didn't receive an airing until 1958. All the characters and scenes are based on actual events - see the Wikipedia article, cited at the top of this blog, for further details.

The play opens with a jazz band, in a speakeasy setting of Chicago of the 1930s. We are introduced to the main characters, and soon launched into the story of Arturo Ui, the gangster who wants to control the cauliflower trade in Chicago. But that's just the start.. Henry Goodman is terrific as the title character, who starts as a figure of fun and becomes something much more sinister. The action propels us to the final scene, which is closer than any of us would like to be to a Nuremberg rally, with an enormous podium, huge banners unfurled at the sides, and heavies stationed strategically around the theatre, clapping at the appropriate moments and intimidating the audience into feeling they should do the same.

And the last lines of the play are stunning. "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again." I had no problem giving this a standing ovation, and I'm very glad I got to see it. Highly recommended - runs until Dec 7.

Right! Back to a film for tomorrow night - feels like a safer proposition! Blue Jasmine, at last - the new Woody Allen that isn't like a Woody Allen, apparently. A reviewer said that all you have to do to see how good Cate Blanchett is in the part is to imagine anyone else in it. She plays the neurotic character, with Alec Baldwin as her ex-husband and Peter Sarsgaard as the new love in her life. I've booked plays for Friday and Saturday - Land of our Fathers, set in a coal mine, is Friday's. I would've booked it for Thursday, but it was sold out.. and Saturday's is Scenes from a Marriage. 'Tis very annoying - there was a Time Out offer for it, advertised as late as last Saturday, but the offer was sold out today and the cheapest place to get a ticket was from the venue website. Maybe it got a good review in the Friday papers. It's at the St James Theatre, which is the one where I always get an aisle seat because I find the legroom slightly cramped. I always book the back row, and always get moved down towards the front because the place is half empty. We shall see what happens on Saturday..