Henry Goodman interview: How to make Brecht fun

The face is unlined. The tan is as deep as Brazilian hardwood. The thatch of grey hair looks like a gift from God rather than the achievement of surgical intervention. At 63, the actor Henry Goodman keeps himself in excellent trim. He exudes energy and concentration, and in the hour we spend together, he relates every aspect of our talk straight back to the show he’s promoting, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Brecht’s political allegory uses imaginary figures from Chicago’s underworld to satirise Hitler’s assumption of power in Germany during the 1930s. The script was written in just three weeks, in 1941, while Brecht was in exile in Helsinki awaiting his visa for America.

‘Brecht wrote this to warn the Americans: fascism could happen in your country. You love gangsters. You love murderers. You love film stars. You love celebrity. How can I convince you that in your culture such a terrible thing could happen? By taking your gangsters, your Capones, and showing you how these people can get away with terrible things because there’s corruption all around. That’s why he chooses Chicago. It’s corrupt.’

Goodman’s upbringing in Whitechapel, east London, gave him an automatic understanding of the lead character. ‘To grow out of my surroundings, without in any way looking down on them, I had to move out of them and improve myself. That’s what happens in Ui. This actor comes in, just like Hitler, and says, “I want to learn to talk better. I want to learn to, er, you know, ercu-lution lessons.” He gets things wrong and he’s an idiot. That’s what happened to Hitler, and to Ui. Insignificant little shits, little nerds who everyone laughed at until something happened that made them say, “I’ll stop your laughing.” Not that I was laughed at, it was a wonderful community.