Classic Stage Company celebrates the official opening of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Artistic Director John Doyle, November 14. The political allegory stars four-time Tony Award nominee Raúl Esparza in the title role—a Depression-era Chicago mobster, who, with the help of his henchmen, manipulates and murders his way to totalitarian rule of the cauliflower trade.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui began previews October 30 and continues its extended run through December 22. Written in 1941 while Brecht was in exile from Nazi Germany, the play uses a vaudevillian portrayal of American mafia culture to parallel events that brought the Third Reich to power.

Completing the cast are George Abud, Eddie Cooper, Tony nominee Elizabeth A. Davis, Christopher Gurr, Omozé Idehenre, Mahira Kakkar, and Thom Sesma.

“Every day I read the play, I think, ‘I hear these words on CNN as I read them on the page.’ The play will be falling right around the midterm elections, and it’s fitting that it reminds us of the choices that are available to us in relation to the way the world can go,” commented Doyle in an earlier statement. “That really is at the foundation of what classical theatre says. Classic plays have politics at their heart—you take a play like Richard III or the Scottish Play—they’re warnings. And there’s a warning in Arturo Ui. This is a time for theatre to say something; if we’re not screaming and shouting now, when are we ever going to do it?”

For tickets and more information visit ClassicStage.org.