Shotgun Players
Impress With Their Take on Brecht's Threepenny Opera
Sam Stander
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The
Daily Californian
Long before "American Psycho" or "A Clockwork
Orange," Bertolt Brecht created a charismatic monster
for the ages. Macheath, the central figure of Brecht's "The
Threepenny Opera," is sickening, but also maddeningly
fun to watch. In the Shotgun Players' production of the
raucous 1928 opera, directed by Susannah Martin at Ashby
Stage, Jeff Wood imbues the role of the venal arch-criminal
with just the right mixture of gusto and ambivalence. But
he's not alone - he's surrounded by an equally exuberant
cast, who endow Brecht's polemical play with an air of sinister
joviality.
The "opera" (more of a musical, by modern standards,
since it is not entirely in song) follows the exploits of
the London-based villain Macheath, who keeps out of prison
for his many transgressions only because he's old army buddies
with the chief of Scotland Yard. As the play opens, he's
about to wed Polly Peachum (Kelsey Venter), the seemingly
naive daughter of Jonathan Peachum (Dave Garrett), the wily
self-proclaimed king of the beggars. Peachum wants him out
of the picture, so he coerces police chief Tiger Brown (Danny
Wolohan) into incarcerating old Mackie, but not before Polly
warns her new husband to get out of town. All of this happens
on the eve of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, as Mackie's gang
and Peachum's beggars prepare to hassle and hustle the crowds.
Wood preaches his bourgeois bullshit to the audience with
a smoothness evocative of a young Bowie, and his chemistry
with Wolohan in their scenes together is impressive, but
he's not even the finest performer on display. The show's
star act is Kelsey Venter, whose doe-eyed Polly explodes
with cynical sexuality and justified contempt as the plot
unfolds. Her masterful take on "Barbarian Song"
may have been the best musical performance of the night.
Also virtuoso was Bekka Fink as Mrs. Peachum; her venom
on "The Ballad of Sexual Imperative" was hard
to beat. In fact, the whole Peachum clan stands out, with
Dave Garrett delivering a smarmy but knowing turn as Mr.
Peachum. Less exciting was Beth Wilmurt as Macheath's favorite
whore, Jenny - she was strong in Shotgun's "This World
in a Woman's Hands" earlier this season, and she's
fine here, but she lacks the anger and sexual power that
are fundamental to this world-weary character.
The production's aesthetic is a self-conscious ode to 1977
punk culture - apparently a fashionable frame of reference
for Berkeley theater, if Impact Theatre's "See How
We Are" back in September was any indication. The stage
is festooned with graffiti and the costumes are printed
with nihilistic slogans ("I'm biding my time"),
but the text hasn't been tailored to fit the resetting,
so it feels more like complementary imagery than any sort
of uncomfortable reinterpretation.
Martin's staging creatively foregrounds Brecht's famous
use of Verfremdungseffekt, or "distancing effect."
In order to keep the audience from becoming too cathartically
wrapped up in the action, each scene of the play and each
song is announced by white projected words on the stage,
sometimes featuring aphoristic explanations of the action
onstage. In keeping with the production's punk-influenced
costuming and stage design, three microphone stands roam
the front of the stage, and all songs as well as many lines
of dialogue are performed into the mics, facing the audience.
Kurt Weill's magnificent tunes are performed by a band
stationed at the back of the stage, punningly billed as
the Weillators. Occasionally, members of the cast will filter
in and out of the band as players. For the first few numbers,
including the opening tune, best known by the title "Mack
the Knife," the band sounded shambling and loose, but
this was probably an intentional affectation as they tightened
up for punchy performances of "Pirate Jenny" and
"Second Threepenny Finale," among others.
Though entirely entertaining on a gut level - funny, shocking,
intense - Martin's interpretation cleaves quite close to
Brecht's deconstruction of the conventions of traditional
theater. The audience is constantly reminded that this is
"not real life, but opera." Though we can surely
get a kick out of the aggressive delivery of "Cannon
Song" or relish the catfight dynamics of "Jealousy
Duet," we're ultimately urged by the work's self-aware
symbolism to take something away besides a thrilled grin.
But amidst the already 80-year-old bagging on the bourgeoisie
and this production's peculiar combination of punk iconography
and contemporary symbols such as the Abu Ghraib photographs,
it seems there are any number of political interpretations
to take away.
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