THE 20th Century’s most notorious tyrant is daringly and divisively brought to the stage in one of the most successful and powerful solo works ever presented.

Edinburgh Fringe legend Pip Utton brings the Fuhrer to Dorset for a night in Piddletrenthide and Gillingham with Artsreach, the county's touring arts charity.

Looking uncomfortably like the Fuhrer, Utton stands before a huge Nazi banner addressing his party faithful.

He furnishes his audience with an acute anatomy of fascism; its ideological justifications; its poisoned utopias. They are in the presence of an utterly compelling idealist, and are helplessly drawn in to his warped logic.

Hitler's final performance seems over as he settles into pre-suicidal contemplation.

We know the rest… but Utton has reserved a sting for his tale... a sting so powerful that it pushes the audience into looking within themselves to question their own prejudice and intolerance.

Pip Utton, a firm favourite on the Artsreach touring circuit in Dorset and a legend at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, has produced numerous spellbinding performances over recent years. Winner of The Stage Special Award for Acting Excellence in 2015 this is, however, perhaps his most powerful piece to date.

Artsreach co-director Kerry Bartlett said: “We think it is important that our programme is not only exciting, entertaining and of high quality, but that it also includes productions such as this which stimulate emotion and debate amongst our audiences.”

What made Adolf Hitler so compulsive? How could any cultured person follow him to destruction, desolation and genocide to leave a long deep scar on the 20th century? How do the extremist parties of today command such huge followings all over the world? Pip Utton's amazing play takes his audience on a journey into themselves, gently coaxing an understanding of the mind-set of a nation that could allow a man such as Hitler to take control. This is live theatre at its best with a theme and subject that touches us all. Powerful, dramatic, challenging, divisive, illustrative and educational, everyone should experience it.

*Adolf, Gillingham School Theatre on Thursday October 19. Call 01747 833844. Also showing at Piddletrenthide Village Hall on Friday October 20. Call 01300 348247. Tickets are also available from artsreach.co.uk

Thurs 19 Oct, 7:30pm. Gillingham School Theatre. 01747 833844

Fri 20 Oct, 7:30pm. Piddletrenthide Memorial Hall. 01300 348247

www.artsreach.co.uk