Susannah Martin's punk 'Threepenny'

Regan McMahon, Special to The Chronicle
Thursday, December 31, 2009
sfgate.com

When Susannah Martin was earning her fine arts master's degree in directing at UC Davis and working on experimental theater pieces, she didn't imagine she'd be spending part of her career directing the classics. But she did George Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" for Berkeley's Shotgun Players in spring 2008, Chekhov's "Three Sisters" for Porchlight Theatre in Ross last summer, and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera" for Shotgun, now extended through Jan. 31. Next she'll do Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" for the Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette.

"It is ironic," says Martin from her home in San Francisco.

She did draw on one part of her background for "Threepenny" when she decided to set the show (which was set in Victorian England when it premiered in Berlin in 1928) in punk-era America. Martin had been a punk herself in late '70s/early '80s San Francisco.

We asked Martin about her choices for this powerful, edgy interpretation of the musical about criminal gang leader Macheath; a corrupt police chief; Mac's sweet wife, Polly; and her venal father, who runs a gang of beggars and takes a big cut of their proceeds.

Q: How did you decide on a punk motif for "Threepenny"?

A: I didn't want to do a museum piece, so I went into the text to find out what was relevant about it now. The alienating quality in the script and the music has a direct correlation to punk: Brecht's lyrics are direct, harsh, political, at times cynical and didactic. Weill's melodies are beautiful, catchy and yet angular and abrupt. Ideally, the audience is forced to sit in the middle of that dichotomy, that alienating juxtaposition.

In punk, the melodies and singing style is direct, cynical, political, angry. And yet, the passion and joy and youthful fun is catchy, infectious, intriguing, exciting. Both Brecht and Weill's songs and punk music (and the punk aesthetic) are simultaneously pulling you in and pushing you away.

Q: Why is Mac's gang squatting in an abandoned bank?

A: In the early punk movement, a lot of people were squatting. I knew punks who squatted in big government buildings, some on Market Street. One was the old Polytechnic High School near Kezar Stadium that has since been torn down. It's fancy condos now. That sort of says it all.

In Brecht's "Threepenny Novel" as well as in the play, Mac's biggest goal is to go into banking. The bankers are just as corrupt as the criminals. And of course we did want to capitalize on all of the banking and economic talk in the script and how that connects to the "too big to fail" realities that we're living in now.

Q: Why did you set it in America?

A: I'm an American in 2009, so I wanted this to be relevant and applicable to America. It deals with issues of finance and corruptibility and everyone doing what they can to survive. Nothing much has changed.

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