The Threepenny Opera
Written by: Bertolt Brecht
Music By: Kurt Weill
Performed by the SoulPepper Theatre Company
Director: Tim Albery
Musical Director: Paul Sportelli
Closing March 14th, 2007.
Tickets: $35 - $59.
Rush Tickets*: Youth (21 or younger) $5, Adult $20
*(sporadic availability 15 minutes prior to show)
By Leo K. Moncel
Posted March 4th, 2007
Whores whore, burglars loot, and stick-up men rob not because they are any more wicked than anyone else, but precisely because they are as wicked as everyone else and their circumstances afford them only crime for improving their stake in life. The lower class crook is jailed for his hunger while the bourgeois capitalist is celebrated for his.
It’s a vicious worldview, and Soulpepper’s latest production of The Threepenny Opera positively revels in it. The classical notion that tragedy is the result of an audience feeling pity and horror simultaneously is flipped on its head. Laughter simultaneous with horror is the recipe for a black comedy and Soulpepper gets the dreadful joke here.
The story begins with Mr. Peachum, a merchant who makes a handsome living pimping a racket of beggars whom he afflicts with artificial disabilities to make more pitiable. Peachum is naturally offended when he learns his daughter, Polly, sneaks off to cavort with Mr. Macheath, a.k.a. Mac the Knife, London’s most notorious criminal.
Polly, meanwhile, is head over heels for Mackie, and the two are married in a warehouse. Upon learning of the wedding, Peachum plays all his cards to have Mac jailed by police chief Jackie “Tiger” Brown. In jail, Mac is visited at once by Polly and Lucy Brown, the chief’s daughter. Each woman claims Mac her own. Lucy frees Mac only for him to fall back into the clutches of the law when sold out by his old flame, Jenny Diver, a prostitute whom he visits instead of making an escape. Mac is sentenced to the gallows.
Brecht lifted the plot from The Beggar’s Opera, then reworked the play into his model of epic theatre, which alienates the audience from the action and emphasizes thought over feeling. To this end, the script calls for direct addresses to the audience, breaking the play’s action momentarily. These narratives are performed by a newly invented butcher/narrator character played by a mohawked and nose-ringed d’bi.young.anitafrika, who walks freely in and out of the story, attacking and breaking the dramatic world.
Set is crucial for creating an immersive dramatic world,. Soulpepper’s new Young Theatre in the Distillery District serves as a backdrop. The original red brickwork has been kept and is ideal to the harsh but elaborate industrial set.
The actors, far from saintly, have a tremendous amount to play with. It’s a delight to watch. Albert Schultz, who happens to be the artistic director of Soulpepper, brings Mac the Knife alive with gleeful viciousness. Patricia O’Callaghan is an excellent Polly, seemingly so naïve and head over heels in love, but with a centre of ice, betrayed best in her musical numbers. Another stand-out is Sarah Wilson as Jenny Diver. It’s not a large part, but Wilson absolutely simmers with dark allure. More impressive though, is how, with a natural gravitas and some careful decisions, she hints at a heavy sadness just below the damaged but swaggering exterior.
The one point where the production just misses the mark is in its attempt to physicalize the steamy, sexy parts. The actors are convincingly seductive in their spoken and sung performances, but they’re not salsa dancers. Two attempts at burlesque eroticism — an exchange where Mac and Polly consummate their marriage and a song between Mac and Jenny about the good old days together, both fall shy of the mark. Never have I seen a beautiful woman’s crotch groped so mechanically. The sex, like the violence, is left more potent as something alluded to.
The Threepenny Opera is an exquisitely crafted piece of entertainment. It’s a joy to get lost in the aesthetics of it. Consuming this piece is like enjoying an ornately decorated cake with a razorblade in it. A treat. But horrifying.