The Threepenny Opera

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

BAHAHA

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

P

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".

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

Brilliant.

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