Placebo makes its stage debut with the score for a Brecht production by the Royal Shakespeare Company Pop and rock

Alt-rockers Placebo are set to collaborate with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) by recording a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

The play, written in 1941, is about a Chicago mobster who seeks to control the city’s vegetable trade through corruption, intimidation and violence: an obvious allegory for how Adolf Hitler came to power during the 1930s.

Mark Gatiss, known for The League of Gentlemen, Sherlock and more, will play Ui in his RSC debut. It will premiere on April 11 at the Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon.

It’s the first stage work for Placebo, who had a string of major hits in the late 1990s onwards with muscular goth rock and occasionally sexually provocative songwriting, including the Top 5 singles Nancy Boy, Pure Morning and You Don’t Care About Us. They have steadily released eight studio albums, the most recent, Never Let Me Go, giving them their highest album chart ever at number three.

The band’s Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal said they were “honored and extremely excited” for the collaboration, adding: “Thematically, this cautionary tale from history feels more urgent and insightful than ever, and its relevance to today’s world is chilling. The creative process for this project was very different for us, and at times was akin to shooting arrows into the dark. So we tried to connect with the psychology of outsiders, as well as drawing inspiration from the themes of power, isolation and moral decay – which are in The essence of this play.

The production’s director, Sean Linen, described the mock film’s score as “shimmeringly expansive, darkly seductive, and deeply theatrical.”

Lenin also highlighted the play’s resonance with today’s political reality. “With the threat posed by the far right growing daily at home and abroad, it is our job as artists to speak out. No other play interrogates the political moment we are living in more than this play.”

Although written in 1941, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was not premiered until after Brecht’s death, in 1958. Recent productions include one with Lenny Henry in the title role at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2017.