The Threepenny Opera

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 7:24pm

What do all of you think about this show? What is your favorite production, cast recording, design, and so on?

I've seen a Blitzstein production, the Wallace Shawn adaptation, and a "hybrid" combining elements of variosu translations and adaptations, and liked all of them, for the most part.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 7:42pm

I'm one of the few who adored the Roundabout production of Shawn's adaptation. I didn't really care for Blitzstein's translation after hearing Shawn's first, it seemed to have nowhere near the poignancy, wit, or bite. I know "poignancy" isn't what Brecht usually wanted to achieve, but isn't it what we hope for when we go to the theatre? So I'm very saddened that that translation (and that CAST!) did not get recorded.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 8:46pm

I liked the Roundabout production as well. It's a shame that we didn't get a cast recording, but based on the reviews it wasn't a surprise.

[Perfectly Marvelous]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 9:08pm

I have the original and 1976 recordings. I love the NYSF one because of Raul Julia and Ellen Greene.

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 10:13pm

I'm fond of the Roundabout as well, though I wouldn't rank it my favorite set of lyrics. (I'm a Donmar guy for that category). Still, I LOVED the performances. Cumming's Macheath managed to pull off the ambiguous sexuality of the character without making it an obvious joke... while at the same time, managing to make it a very obvious joke when it needed to be. Tiger Brown was perfectly tight-wound, although his sexuality is not usually addressed in such a manner, and Rooney actually made me want to see more of Lucy onstage, which is almost NEVER the case.

But Jim Dale stole the show. Breaking character and speaking to the audience- although not nearly as much Brechtian as vaudevillian- or dancing aroudn the stage with that peculiar, slithery physicality, he ran the show like a Cirque Du Soleil clown-host.

[Lumen2]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 10:20pm

I have the Donmar Warehouse Production recording and it's my favorite, mainly because Mack the Knife isn't some jazzy Sinatra standard in the middle of a Marxist play.

And while I didn't see the Roundabout's (unfortunately) I saw clips and figured I would enjoy it. Isaac Mizrahi's fetishistic costumes looked glorious! I just run into so many problems because the majority of revivals have different translations, and even the Penguin Classic edition of the text is different from everything I've heard. I never realized how difficult it can be to get a hold on a musical, but i suppose if it's not originally in your native language, things get lost along the way.
Updated On: 9/5/09 at 10:20 PM

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 10:39pm

Odd for the Unions to be depicted in such a satirical, less-than-stellar light in an otherwise Marxist show.

And, yes, Donmar was easily the most political of the Threepennys, but its script attacks capitalism much less pointedly than it attacks government corruption and racism in the face of the Rodney King riots and OJ Simpson era.

[Lumen2]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 10:54pm

Many revived works are amenable to current affairs, I suppose. Wasn't Kushner's Mother Courage basically a three hour long war protest? Not that that's too far from the original, but I thought he was trying to be really obvious and critical about it.

I suppose Donmar's production was teetering political lines, but having never seen it, I'm only getting half the story.

[Pgenre]

Posted: 9/5/09 at 11:46pm

I love THREEPENNY and consider myself a relative Brecht scholar, but the translations of some of his work are pretty dire...

I love Jeremy Sams' postmodern, post-apocalyptic take on the story, along with all all the rest of it. I have no idea how the staging must have been, but it works great on record. Wallace Shawn's is fun and the Roundabout production was stylish and edgy but pretty tame ultimately because it was so... to be frank, it had a little too much of that "been there/done that" Bush burnout vibe prevalent in some social circles at the time...

The less said about Manheim/Willet, the better and Blitztein's is FAR too tame.

Oh, how I wish W.H. Auden had done a translation of this as well... how about Tony Kushner? His MOTHER COURAGE was excellent and I like his CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE quite a bit as well, though Bently's is best.

I think it's time for a THREEPENNY for the ages and as fun as Roundabout's was, it wasn't it. I was there on the night of no amplification, I'm proud to say. Ana Gasteyer OWNED. Cyndi unamplified from the first row was delightful I must say and the live voice a too rare occurrence these days on a Broadway stage (or on the aisle, as the case may be). Nellie McKay and Alan were very hard to hear though, as nuanced and lovely as their performances were.

Shawn should have worked with a lyricist, or at least a collaborator on the songs, although his concept (or lack of one) was pretty misguided. But the worst problem was the lyrics. Some of those lyrics were just... not Brecht and not right. In any way.

And the direction was boring and uninspired. There I said it. It was fun but not a true Brechtian experience as I imagine the 1976 version was, for whatever else it may have lacked.

P
Updated On: 9/5/09 at 11:46 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/6/09 at 1:25am

There is no more Brechtian version of Mack the Knife than this one, by Ann-Margret.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oPY4mnWY7Q

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 9/6/09 at 1:25am

BAHAHA

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/6/09 at 10:40am

As far as Blitzstein's being too tame... the lyrics on the cast recording are not the actual show lyrics. To hear the actual Blitzstein lyrics, if you can't see the play, listen to the Mack the Knife movie soundtrack.

[Pgenre]

Posted: 9/6/09 at 6:55pm

Yes, I'm aware of BOTH sets of Blitztein's lyrics. Tame.

P

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/6/09 at 10:24pm

Yeah. There's not a "perfect" translation, sadly.

Wallace Shawn's is hilarious and dark, but goes for the dirty joke, EVERY time it can.

Blitztein's are a bit on the tame side.

Jeremy Sams' are gritty and raw, but should have a disclaimer- "Warning- contains British themes." Arjies, toff, khaki as a skin color, etc.

[BroomstickBoy]

Posted: 9/6/09 at 11:31pm

I think the Manheim-Willet translation is the best.

I feel the Wallace Shawn version is just one big shock-jock play. I understand Brecht's text is very raunchy, but the way the revival was done, it made it seem to be done all for shock value, with very little substance, though I was SOLD with Cyndi Lauper's rendition of the "Solomon Song".

[ggersten]

Posted: 9/7/09 at 5:09pm

I've seen it twice. Have no idea whose translations.

The first was at Loretta Hilton Repertory in St. Louis - I was a teen. Didn't understand half of the show, but thought it great.

The second was the Sting version in 1989 in D.C. before it went to Broadway. It was dreadful. Sting's voice was shot - he had no sense of character. The discordance was simply discordant. The lighting was so dark, you could barely see what was going on and we had good seats. It was a painful evening. (Luckily for the trip, we managed to see Tyne Daly in Gypsy three nights earlier for the closing D.C. performance before it went to Broadway)

[peerrjb]

Posted: 9/7/09 at 7:11pm

The show is a tricky one, regardless of translation. My favorite was a wayyyyyy off NY production where the director remembered that, regardless of the show's German roots, it is "The Beggar's Opera" redone, and he kept the crazy English-as-seen-by-Brecht aspect in the foreground. It's not a clownshow. Oh, and whatever one does, the show works best with Kurt Weill's original scoring. It's really the heart of the piece, as far as my musician-sensibilities are concerned.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/7/09 at 8:20pm

I agree about the scoring. I think Blitzstein agreed also--he did the best he could at the time. And it made Brecht and Weill part of the American culture in a way they never were before--and have never been since.

The Sting production was very bad, but the Michael Feingold translation may be the best. But because of the failure of that production, it's never done.

[BroomstickBoy]

Posted: 9/7/09 at 10:33pm

Is there any way to get a copy of the Feingold translation?

I love Marianne Faithfull's take on a few Threepenny songs, with the Frank McGuinness translation she performed in Ireland. I'd love to read the whole text.

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 9/7/09 at 11:18pm

I think I was dissapointed with the Roundabout production because I was expecting it to be the most astounding theatrical piece I had seen up to that point. I had such high expectations and I felt the production was enjoyable, but I found parts of it a tad droll.

I have been wanting the recording with Raul Julia for ages. The pictures I saw of him as Macheath are awesome.

The recording I have is amazing, but it's in German. A teacher made a copy of it for me, so all I really know about it is it has Uta Lemper in it. Someone I admire because her tone is impecable.

[Lumen2]

Posted: 9/8/09 at 10:25pm

I see your Ann-Margaret, PalJoey, and raise you this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG9eiLVT2Rc

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/8/09 at 10:34pm

You win.

[Perfectly Marvelous]

Posted: 9/9/09 at 10:17am

I love Uta Lemper.

The NYSF recording is very good, I believe they had to get a few instruments specially made for the orchestra so it would have an authentic Brechtian vibe (I could be wrong, though, having read that somewhere a while ago).

It's my favorite as far as translations go, because it maintains the rauchiness of Brecht's original text without going overboard.

Updated On: 9/9/09 at 10:17 AM

[broadway86]

Posted: 9/9/09 at 5:37pm

I played The Street Singer in Blitzstein's translation, and it's one of my favorite musicals.

I would love to see this cast...

Mack the Knife - JAMES MARSDEN
Polly Peachum - JENNIFER GARNER
Mr. Peachum - JOHN LITHGOW
Mrs. Peachum - CHRISTINE BARANSKI
Jenny Diver - JANE LEEVES
Lucy Brown - IDINA MENZEL
Tiger Brown - BILL NIGHY
Street Singer - RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/9/09 at 7:17pm

Brilliant.

Oh, by the way, which production includes the Streetsinger singing a reprise of the Solomon Song?