It’s 1930’s Chicago, a time of poverty, prohibition, and gangsters. Small-time mobster Arturo Ui is desperate to claim his slice of the American pie. And like all aspiring leaders, Ui has the interests of the common man at heart — he offers them protection. Or their businesses burn down.

Written in Denmark, Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece — in a “tremendous new adaptation” (Observer) by Pulitzer, Olivier and Tony Award-winning American playwright Bruce Norris — is a savage satire of social and political corruption. The rise of gangster Arturo Ui parodies the rise of Hitler — but as we are advised, “howsoever much we wish it weren’t this gangster play is, sadly, all too current.”