Sly men and monsters

Zimbabwean actor Lucian Msamati is about to become indelibly associated in telly watchers' minds with shy, unassuming manhood.

But while he was on location in Botswana, he received a phone call from the Lyric Hammersmith's artistic director, David Farr, proposing something quite different - the lead role in a version of Brecht's The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui, set in Africa.

'So, I put on my best actorly voice and said [here Msamati's rich, plump Zimbabwean vowels morph into a posh accent]: "Of course, I'd be delighted, absolutely!" Seriously, though, I spent some time in Zimbabwe kicking ideas around. It's a play about men who become monsters; obviously there are a million parallels and resonances.'

Arturo Ui is indeed a murderous thug who first conquers the cauliflower business and then the city itself in Brecht's fiercely funny - if heavy-handed and literal - parable of fascist tyranny.

Brecht wrote it in 1941 as a horrified response to the ease with which he considered Germany had capitulated to Nazi ideology. Although it is set in downtown Chicago, every character and incident is based on a real person or historic event associated with the Third Reich.

Farr's original plan was to locate the play in Zimbabwe, with Ui modelled on that country's very own political monster, President Robert Mugabe.

'In the end, we decided that a Zimbabwean setting would simply be too specific,' says Msamati, a co-founder of the now-defunct Zimbabwean theatre company Over The Edge. 'Instead, we are using a more general African backdrop, even though I wrestle with this notion of a generalised Africa because I just don't think it exists as a concept.

'So many strong men - Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Robert Mugabe and into that group I include George W Bush, Tony Blair, even Gordon Brown - all share the same marks and distinctions of men of power. The play should make you think of all of them, not just one.

'What interests me is that the circumstances under which anyone rises to power are incredibly human. These people are not animals formed in some lab. All of us have these tendencies and they come out in us in all sorts of ways.'

Msamati was born in Tanzania but moved to Zimbabwe when he was six, spending the next 17 years there. Long enough to mean he considers himself Zimbabwean; certainly long enough for him to grieve over the devastation wrought in recent years by Mugabe's economic policies.

'In the 1980s, Zimbabwe was the boom town and there was a big emphasis on attracting black African expats such as my dad, who is a doctor, to train people up,' he says. 'Harare became this thriving cultural centre. There was so much talent there.

'At one point, Zimbabwe had a higher adult literacy rate than the US. You are talking about the most educated population in sub-Saharan Africa, although many people didn't get that. I remember touring with Over The Edge to the US and people saying to us: "But you speak Shakespeare so well." And we would go: "Hello, we went to school. We don't live in huts." So to see all that potential wasted and crushed hurts dreadfully.'