Threepenny Opera Reviews — Page 3

Well, like I said before, if it doesn't get recorded, I bet a key factor involved will be Wallace Shawn's new translation. I could easily see the Weill/Brecht estate deciding not to preserve it.

Updated On: 4/20/06 at 08:24 PM

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/theater/reviews/21thre.html

And I thought Lauper would be considered the highlight of the production, apparently Nellie McKay is stealing everyone's thunder...

The highlights of the NY TIMES Review:

AND you thought those crazy, hazy nights when Studio 54 sizzled were strictly a thing of the past. Think again, disco boys and girls. Why right now — on the very spot where Halston, Liza, Bianca and Andy once held sybaritic court — you can watch the same kinds of revels they might have witnessed in the 1970's, thanks to the shrill, numbing revival of "The Threepenny Opera" that opened at the theater at Studio 54 last night.

There's one big difference: nobody in the current incarnation of those days of swine and poses seems to be having any fun. This is one party where the hangover begins almost as soon as the evening does.


Looking like Dietrich and sounding like a Brooklyn Piaf, Ms. Lauper delivers Jenny's ballads with teary, soulful intensity. She also leads, in Lenya-like style, the show's famous prologue, "Song of the Extraordinary Crimes of Mac the Knife." That marvelous trouper Jim Dale plays Mr. Peachum, Polly's father and the head of a vast network of beggars, in the seedy music-hall style of Laurence Olivier in "The Entertainer." As his wife, Ana Gasteyer talks like a shrill Scarsdale matron and sings penetratingly in a voice of a hundred trumpets.

Mr. Cumming brings much conviction and agony to Macheath's songs of the oppressed in the prison and hanging scenes. But there's little sense of the menacing charisma that keeps all of London atremble.

Ms. McKay, the inventive and seriously talented young singer-songwriter ("Get Away From Me"), comes closest to achieving a Brechtian effect. Clad in trailing pre-Raphaelite bridal white, her Polly speaks and sings with a flat, deadpan sincerity that suggests sugary blandness can accommodate a multitude of sins. It's a brave, carefully thought-out performance, though its willful affectlessness means that songs like "Pirate Jenny" (restored to Polly here, as in the original version) have no chance of being showstoppers.

Updated On: 4/20/06 at 09:06 PM

Talkin' Broadway is positive, the one I agree with the most:

"So if you're going to take umbrage to any new calculation, or (worse yet!) a new translation (by actor-playwright Wallace Shawn), of Brecht's original German play, you might as well stay home. This Threepenny is not for you. It is, however, for everyone else."
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"So it's unsurprising that the story of independent-businessman thief Macheath (Cumming) doing battle with corporatizer Jonathan Peachum (Dale) and his wife (Gasteyer), the head of a coalition of the city's beggars, is communicated so clearly and cleanly. The marriage of Macheath to Peachum's daughter, Polly (McKay), appropriately rocks the Peachum power structure. Polly's battle for Macheath's affections with his other squeeze, Lucy Brown (played, brilliantly, by male actor Brian Charles Rooney), the daughter of a corrupt policeman, is comically vicious. Even Macheath's ultimate fate, spurned by conscience-driven liberalism riding in on a traditional deus ex machina, is startlingly well integrated.

However, it must be stated - and some might consider this a flaw - that the production packs all the emotional punch of doing laundry. The plight of the poor registers intellectually (which Brecht might appreciate), but the ghoulish, leather-clad ensemble of the damned - costumed by, of all people, Isaac Mizrahi - don't look like they're suffering much (at which Brecht might frown). And while some cast members, particularly Lauper and McKay, cut arresting forms onstage and knock out the songs like natural-born interpreters (at times, McKay sounds and acts like Judy Garland at her most vulnerably pouty), their characterizations are otherwise most charitably described as approximate."
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"But what really matters is how much of Brecht truly emerges from this production. Elliott and his company have grippingly postulated what Brecht himself might have created were he still alive and revisiting his own work: They've made alterations of material and tone that nonetheless leave the spirit of the original firmly intact. That alone makes this Threepenny Opera far and away the least alienating, and most successful, musical revival of the season."



Review

Updated On: 4/20/06 at 09:11 PM

It really seems like the reviewers are having more of a problem with Brecht than with the production itself and are taking it out on the wrong things. I am incredibly suprised and sadened by the reaction from critics.

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No, I think the reviewers are having a problem with Elliott's interpretation of Brecht...

And Matthew Murray is an idiot. If the show is the least alienating of the season, it hasn't served Brecht well at all. The entire point of the show is to alienate the audience.

Updated On: 4/20/06 at 09:16 PM

Alot of these negative reviews seem to be criticizing the premise of the show itself and the intended alienation. Personally I love the show but if this is going to be their complaint it should rest on the show itself and not this production, something none of the critics seem to realize.

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Dirty rotten - there is a difference between premise and concept - I think you are confusing critics disdain for Elliott's concept of Brecht's premise. No theatre critic with half a brain is going to bash Brecht's theatrical conceits at this late stage of the game.

But how can it be too alienating? If it disgusted you so much that you walked out, wouldnt that just please Brecht more? From how I understand it, the piece is supposed to make you angry and take another look inside yourself and the world arround you. This way the show will cause you to take an action, which is intended. I just cant understand how, under Brecht's concept, the alienation effect can be taken too far. Mabye I just have a bad interpretation...

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Updated On: 4/20/06 at 09:25 PM

double post, oops

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Updated On: 4/20/06 at 09:26 PM

I have to go, but I'm not giving up the fight for this show! :P

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i dont know if you guys have seen and talked about this already, but broadway.com had a VERY negative review

fyi...

i can post a link if yall want