Skip to main content

The Threepenny Opera

Festival Theatre

Five stars 


Love and money are everything in Australian maverick Barrie Kosky’s audacious new look at Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s ‘play with songs’, drawn from Elisabeth Hauptmann’s translation of John Gay’s eighteenth century romp, The Beggar’s Opera. Almost a hundred years on from its 1928 premiere, Kosky’s Berliner Ensemble production breathes new life into the show, as he does away with Weimar style trappings and drapes it in an infinitely more modern looking if still decadent gloss.

Set in a poverty strapped world where appearances matter, Kosky opens proceedings in front of a full length silver curtain, where local gang boss Peachum holds court before Macheath and Peachum’s daughter Polly make their entrance. The revolt into style that follows resembles a 1980s Soho-set pop video dreamt up by an unholy alliance of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Julian Temple.

Gabriel Schneider’s Macheath, aka Mack the Knife, is a big suited city boy spiv forever on the make or on the run. Cynthia Micas’ Polly sports a rah-rah skirt, similarly glammed up in her Dinah Ehm designed finery.As Macheath hams it up, at one point showering himself with glitter as he claims his narcissistic moment, there are frequent nods to the band as he and Polly flirt with the audience.

Polly sings Pirate Jenny as a nightclub turn aloft set designer Rebecca Ringst’s maze of podiums that house the ensemble like a team of off-duty go-go dancers. Later, as Polly’s love rival Lucy prepares to knock off her nemesis, the catfight that follows looks like a closing time scrap between besties outside a cocktail bar, with all the tears and tantrums involved before they make up.

All this is raucously soundtracked by musical director Adam Benzwi, who helms a storming eight-piece band who stay true to Weill’s ragged streetwise spirit. Schneider and Micas lead a glorious ensemble, which also includes Amelie Willberg as Lucy, and a keening Bettina Hoppe as Jenny.

Only at the end do the cast appear in more familiar Cabaret style black, as we see how those in power are let off for their crimes with little more than a caution in a world where love is still for sale in this mighty reinvention.


The Herald, August 21st 2023


ends

 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more