Jacobi and Goodman take centre stage at anniversary festival

HENRY Goodman plays one of the richest and most demanding roles in the contemporary dramatic canon in a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s epic, savagely funny parable of the rise of Hitler.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui also features Michael Feast, William Gaunt and Joe McGann among the distinguished cast. The play is set in 1930s Chicago, the Great Depression – a time of unemployment, fear and corruption and the perfect time for a small-fry crime boss and his henchmen to make it big, to seize a greater power, an absolute power.

Arturo Ui and his mob of gangsters run protection rackets for both workers and businesses. Soon Ui’s menacing shadow looms large, from the markets, to the docks and across the city itself.

Henry Goodman, who was last seen at Milton Keynes Theatre in the heart-rendering drama, Duet for One takes the title role.

Stage and screen veteran Michael Feast plays Roma with William Gaunt as Old Dogsborough and Joe McGann as Giri/O’Casey.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui runs at Chichester Festival Theatre’s Minerva Theatre, from June 29 – 28 July

*IN the main theatre Derek Jacobi returns to the venue in Heartbreak House, Bernard Shaw’s comic exploration of love and social mores. The notable cast also includes Emma Fielding and Ronald Pickup.

Bernard Shaw, the master of wit and social commentary, brilliantly debates money and morality, idealism and realism, as he chronicles a society teetering on the threshold of enormous change.

Also in the production is TV actor and screenwriter George Layton and Jo Stone-Fewings who has already featured in the restoration comedy, The Way of the World, in Chichester this season.

Heartbreak House runs, in rep, from July 6 – August 25.

To book tickets or find out information for either production go on-line to cft.org.uk or contact the box office on 01243 781312.