There’s a particular joy in hearing Mark Gatiss talk about the moment something first sparked in his imagination. In this case, it’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht’s satire on the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, which Gatiss first encountered as a teenager at Darlington Civic Theatre in a production that, somewhat incongruously, starred Robin Asquith, the face – and bottom – of the bawdy 70s Confessions… film comedies.
“He was absolutely brilliant and it was like being punched in the throat,” recalls Gatiss. “I remember it so vividly, particularly the end where Ui pulls off his moustache off and says, ‘The bitch that bore him is in heat again.’ It sort of changed my life.”
Gatiss, arguably best known as the co-creator of Sherlock and member of the darkly hilarious The League Of Gentlemen, has long balanced genre storytelling with a deep love of the theatre – particularly work that disturbs as much as it entertains. That desire to unsettle still clearly fuels him as he prepares to take on the title role of Arturo Ui for his Royal Shakespeare Company debut. The production has been a long time coming, even if Gatiss’ participation feels almost accidental. “The director, Seán Linnen, just texted me about a year ago and said, ‘Have you ever thought about doing Arturo Ui?’ And I said, ‘I’ve thought about nothing else since I was 15!’”
But if the play once felt like a cautionary tale, Gatiss is under no illusions about its current resonance. “My only worry is that it’s gone from being a warning from history to being the fucking news,” he says, with a grim laugh. “And that’s the scary part.” There’s a similar tension in the production’s music, provided by Placebo, whose frontman Brian Molko is still facing a defamation lawsuit from Italian PM Giorgia Meloni after calling her a “racist” and a “fascist” during a festival in Turin in 2023.
“Their soundtrack is terrific!” Gatiss enthuses. “Dark and menacing and fun at the same time. There’s even a bit that sounds like slightly sinister lift music.” That tonal duality of humour rubbing up against horror is key to Brecht’s vision. “It’s about the banality of evil,” he continues. “The Hitler gang, which this show completely parodies and satirises, they’re just a bunch of losers and misfits, and then everything goes their way.”
If that sounds uncomfortably familiar, Gatiss isn’t shy about drawing parallels. “We’re living with it again,” he says. “Trump and Hegseth and that lot aren’t the brightest buttons in the box, but somehow they’ve got their hands on the levers of power and we’re all paying the price.”
These days, though, Gatiss is wary of being consumed by the same relentless churn of reality that Brecht once sought to expose. “I still listen to news bulletins,” he says, “but I don’t subscribe to the drip feed of horror anymore. It drives me mad.” His solution? “Mozart in the morning.”
It’s a small act of resistance, for sure, but as Brecht pointed out, resistance always has to start somewhere. And here are 13 more good places from Mark Gatiss’ record collection to begin with…
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui runs at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from April 11 – May 30
To begin reading Mark Gatiss’ Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Selection’ below.
