December 18–25, 1997

theater

The Threepenny Opera

Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts., through Jan. 11, 546-STAGE

A guy, presumably homeless, probably hungry, possibly drunk, perhaps dangerous, begged money for food from the audience as they left the theater; we had just sat through a three-hour-long musical play about homeless, hungry, drunk and dangerous people. Nobody gave him anything. This demonstrates any, all or none of the following conclusions:

1. The hardheartedness of the bourgeoisie, inured to the suffering of the underclass, which The Threepenny Opera sings about ("First comes the feeding/ Then comes the moral code");

2. The irrelevance of the play to the audience, who had been entertained but not touched or taught anything by their theatrical experience, perhaps because director Blanka Zizka decided that instead of updating the play (and thereby trying to gain contemporary relevance) she would backdate it by creating a frame play taking place in the United States of the early 1920s, when Calvin the-business-of-America-is-business Coolidge was president, relevant as living memory only for people over 90;

3. Brecht's smug anti-establishment politics: he instructs us as to the misery and suffering of the poor, but then gives us a selection of unrepentant murderers, thieves, pimps and rapists, conflating poverty and criminality, expecting we won't notice the moral equivocation;

4. Everybody was broke because a little cup of coffee in the Wilma lobby costs $1.75.

The Threepenny Opera is Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's most famous collaboration. Filled with edgy music, nearly-impossible-to-sing songs, scandalous and assaulting lyrics (in a new translation by Michael Feingold), it is the story of Macheath, aka Mack the Knife (Raphael Nash Thompson), a gangster chief revered by his thugs and a "prisoner of sexuality," a man who can't resist the temptation of his whores even when the police are hunting him down. He marries Polly (Miriam Shor), daughter of the dreadful Peachums (Lynn Eldredge and John Seitz), organizers of an exploitive beggar business (poor people are supplied with costumes: false stumps, rags and crutches, in exchange for half their take). Macheath is already supposedly married to supposedly pregnant Lucy (Linda Pierson), daughter of Tiger Brown (Anthony Lawton), the chief of police who's an old pal of Macheath's. There is an assortment of prostitutes, most notably Jenny Diver (Robin Miles), another old flame of Macheath's who sells him out for some cash.

The cynicism and venom of the songs ("How do humans live? By being rotten/ By beating, cheating, stealing, smashing friends in the face") is underscored by Brechtian's anti-realist aesthetics ("art isn't nice"), where characters suddenly burst into song or dance to snap the audience out of any inclination to yield to emotional gooeyness. This works best in the powerful ensemble scenes which end each of the three acts, washed with cruel expressionist lighting by Russell Champa. Andrei Efremoff has created a set so theatrically extravagant as to seem an ironic comment on Brecht's Marxist principles.

Three of the women in the cast have fabulous voices. Shor as Polly is a knockout, especially with "Pirate Jenny"—and her "Jealousy Duet" with Pierson is superb—and Eldredge gets the sound and style right in every one of her songs. Thompson's Mack has a great look and a good voice, but he lacks anything like the charismatic charm or sinister grace the character needs, especially evident when he dances. Anthony Lawton is very stylish as the corrupt cop, managing always to be in character and in parody simultaneously. Forrest McClendon is appropriately if irrelevantly disturbing as the carnivalesque M.C., a black man in blackface, giving a grotesque Al Jolson spin to the proceedings.

-Toby Zinman