Preview '05-'06: The Return of Mack the Knife
The Beggar's Opera had a highly successful London return in 1920 which led to international revivals. In Germany, Elisabeth Hauptmann had translated Gay's work for the playwright she was assisting, Bertolt Brecht, and it became Brecht's notion to fashion his own adaptation of Gay's play. While the setting would be Victorian England, Brecht was clearly writing a satire of contemporary German society. And with composer Kurt Weill his collaborator, Brecht was also sending up grand opera.
Hence the title, Die Dreigroschenoper, or The Threepenny Opera. With Weill's wife Lotte Lenya in the role of prostitute Jenny, The Threepenny Opera had its world premiere at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928. After a difficult period of gestation, the work was immediately embraced upon its opening. In spoofing opera, Brecht and Weill had, in fact, created a brand new style of stage musical.
As The Threepenny Opera opens, Polly, the daughter of beggar king and underworld leader Peachum, has married Macheath, a notorious highwayman and womanizer. Mrs. Peachum gets Macheath's former love, whore Jenny, to betray Macheath to the police. He is incarcerated but he manages to escape, with the help of another of his lady loves, Lucy, daughter of corrupt police chief and friend of Macheath's Tiger Brown. Macheath is again arrested and condemned to die, but he's eventually pardoned owing to the ensuing royal coronation.
Brecht's adaptation gave Gay's work greater sting and aggression, resulting in a scathing satire of 20th century Germany. But what made the piece such an immediate sensation was the freshness of the score, which ranges from the memorable opener, "Moritat," delivered by a commentator called the Streetsinger, to a last-act finale that's truly operatic.
Some of the songs illuminate the characters and move the action forward. But others comment on the action, a style that would influence such later musicals as Company, Cabaret, and Chicago. The score was written to be performed by singing actors rather than by top-notch vocalists, and, in the 1928 original, it was accompanied by seven musicians.
New York in 1933 would have none of The Threepenny Opera. The work's playful dissonances and satire of bourgeois society had little attraction for Depression-era audiences, and the first Broadway production of Threepenny that opened at the Empire Theatre on April 13, 1933 lasted just twelve performances.
In 1946, composer Duke Ellington and lyricist John Latouche gave Broadway Beggar's Holiday, their own adaptation of The Beggar's Opera, with Alfred Drake and Zero Mostel taking leads in this unsuccessful resetting of John Gay in contemporary America. But shortly thereafter, New York was ready for The Threepenny Opera.
Directed by Carmen Capalbo and in a superb if less than scrupulously authentic translation and adaptation by Marc Blitzstein, a new Threepenny Opera opened at off-Broadway's Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street in the West Village on March 10, 1954. Lenya recreated her original role of Jenny to considerable acclaim, and a score that had seemed resistible twenty years earlier was now recognized as the sublime achievement it was.
Because of a previous booking, the de Lys Threepenny closed after only ninety-five performances. But influential critics like The New York Times' Brooks Atkinson campaigned for its return. When it reopened on September 20, 1955 at the same theatre, Threepenny became a sensation, lasting 2,611 performances and becoming a cornerstone in the development of off-Broadway. To everyone's surprise, the "Moritat" became a hugely successful pop hit as "Mack the Knife."
In 1931, G.W. Pabst shot two film versions of Threepenny, one in German and one in French. Lenya appeared as Jenny in the German version, and it was here that the actress, to great effect, took the song "Pirate Jenny" away from the character of Polly. A 1962 German film version with Curt Jurgens and Hildegarde Knef was also dubbed into English, the English-language version inserting Sammy Davis as the Streetsinger. A third film version went by the title Mack the Knife and starred Raul Julia 1989.
The off-Broadway Threepenny established the show in this country, and although the production lasted more than six years, it was inevitable that the work would be revived on Broadway. The first major, post-de Lys New York revival was at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre on May 1, 1976. Directed by Richard Foreman, Raul Julia, Ellen Greene, Blair Brown, and Elizabeth Wilson starred in the 306-performance run. The new adaptation was by Ralph Mannheim and John Willett, and was considerably rougher than Blitzstein's.
This was followed by a commercial Broadway revival, directed by John Dexter, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 15, 1989. The revival's raison d'etre was Sting's assumption of the role of Macheath, and he was surrounded by such fetching females as Georgia Brown, Maureen McGovern, and Kim Criswell. Michael Feingold's translation was probably the most authentic of the three post-'33 New York productions, and Dexter's staging was similarly traditional. But Dexter was unable to elicit a unified performance style from his players, and Sting's Macheath was underpowered. Reviews were negative, and the pop star's fans failed to keep the show going for more than sixty-five performances.
Part of the reason for the failure of the '89 revival was that while contemporary critics and audiences continue to be excited by Threepenny's score, they no longer seem to respond to the book as strongly. Perhaps the script's conception as an indictment of German society in the '20s makes it seem dated, but it does seem as though revivals of the show now depend largely on the strength of the songs.
When the Roundabout presents The Threepenny Opera this spring, it will be the show's fourth Broadway production. And Threepenny should be perfect for Studio 54's dingy atmosphere, not to mention the fact that the house was put back on the map by the long-running revival of a Berlin-set musical whose score was influenced by Weill.
The new production will feature a translation by Wallace Shawn and will be directed by Scott Elliott, who recently won acclaim for his revival of Hurlyburly featuring Shawn. Alan Cumming will return to Roundabout musical revivals and Studio 54 as Macheath, and he will be joined by Edie Falco "The Sopranos," Frankie and Johnny...., 'Night Mother as Jenny and vocalist and recording artist Nellie McKay as Polly.
Threepenny is one of the few regularly performed musicals that's in three acts, with specific finales for each act. One assumes this division will be maintained in the new production, even if three-act plays are regularly reduced to two these days. It will be interesting to see if such standout songs as "Pirate Jenny" and "Barbara Song" are given to Polly, as they were in the original script and the '89 revival, or if they go to Jenny and Lucy respectively, as they did in the Blitzstein revival. The '89 revival also restored a difficult operatic aria for Lucy that Criswell had no trouble tossing off. It will also be interesting to see if such "epic theatre" devices as songs sung in front of a half-curtain, or title projections announcing the scenes are maintained in Elliott's staging.
Although the failure of the last Broadway revival of the show is to some extent forgotten, Threepenny Opera does seem in need of a major New York revival. The Cocteau Repertory performed it not long ago. The Roundabout Threepenny sounds like it could have legs and perhaps see a longer run than the company's recent revivals of works by Sondheim.