"flawless...outrageously dynamic...satirically pulsing"

June 26, 2003 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Seventy five years ago, Brecht and Weill smashed across the theatre world of Germany with a "people's opera" that shocked, delighted, enraged and humbled the audiences of its time.

Last night (June 26, 2003) in Williamstown, a star-studded cast, headed by Betty Buckley as Jenny and Jesse L. Martin as Macheath, under the compelling direction of Peter Hunt, opened the Williamstown Theatre Festival's summer season with a flawless production of The Three Penny Opera - one as outrageously dynamic and as satirically pulsing as the long ago production that took Germany by storm.

It is tempting to predict that by summer's end this production will have proved the hit of the season, will have been voted best in all categories, and will be destined to move on to Broadway, cast intact.

The Three Penny Opera, Brecht's modern version of John Gay's l8th century satire, is a beggar's jaded dream of society full of mockery, insidious irony, and low-life romanticism. Its bite and tang, satiric frivolity, and poisonous abandon still jolt in our modern world where Mark Blitzstein's adaptation of Brecht's lyrics, set to Weill's honeyed and poisonous music can ask us, "What keeps a man alive?" and remind us "He lives on others."

Time resonates in this opera. The large modernist painting that hangs across the stage before the play opens gives us a warped Queen Victoria wearing Nazi earrings, the sign above the run-down garage where Mack and Polly are married reads 1875, while Mack's near-hanging almost disrupts a coronation ceremony of earlier in the 19th century.

Place also resonates. The play opens with the Street Singer (Laurent Giroux) greeting us in German and ends with his singing of "Mac the Knife" in German - evoking the play's first production in the bitterness that followed WWI. But Gay's original and Brecht's reworking keep the setting the muddy underbelly of the London slums.

The setting, a three-tiered structure of steel beams, stairs, and cross-walks can readily be the anywhere, shifting often in Brecht's free-wheeling "epic" style from Peachum's Beggars' Outfitting Shop to a brothel in Wopping or Newgate Prision.

Designed by John Conklin, it is especially effective in Act III when the entire cast all face us and, hemmed in their little cells, challenge us with their accusations, one of the many moments when Hunt skillfully uses Brecht's "V-effect," or alientation theory, in which he wanted the audience to be challenged, awake, and thinking about what the play had to say about social conditions. (Such "in-your-face" audience confrontations were Brecht's way of smashing any audience tendency to get carried away by a moment of romance.)

The tiers again are dynamic in the final scene that isolates Mack alone above all those below who have loved, and for the most part, betrayed him.

"Pirate Jenny" and "Solomen Song," Betty Buckley's two solos, are so magnificent, so dynamically rendered, they alone are worth the trip to Williamstown. But she is much more. Her character casually so dominates when on stage one cannot help watching her. Yet she never steals stage. She is Jenny and even Mack cannot fault her for betraying him. As he tells us, "That Jenny could have given me up is astonishing. It is clear proof that the world will always be the same." When she sings, she is sheer magic.

Jesse L. Martin's Macheath is so charming a seducer, so beloved a gang leader, so obviously a brothel favorite, and yet so philosophically optimistic until the end, that he is the wily anti-hero for whom women will wilt, and for whom his policeman buddy, Tiger Brown (engagingly played by Jack Willis), will bend all the rules. His singing is right-on whether it is in a rousing duet army duet with Tiger or a romantic duet with one of his women. He is appealing and wonderful on the scaffold.

Polly Peachum (Melissa Errico) is exactly cast, pretty, half-innocent, with a delightful soprano voice that makes her duets with Mack poignant and compelling. She can also go at it for her man in a jealousy duet with Lucy (the talented and appealing Karen Ziemba) who also claims to be Mack's wife.

The greedy Peachums, lurking in their beggars' outfitting lair provide strident satire with zest and enthusiasm. As Mrs. Peachum, Randy Graff is (despite her marriage to Peachum) woman enough to recognize Mack's snares for Polly, and (because she is married to Peachum) have the values that make her try to capitalize on having a daughter widowed by a criminal. She is also crafty enough to be on hand at the right moments to betray. Her singing voice is admirable and engaging.

David Schramm as Mr. J.J. Peachum opens the action on the right note with his "Morning Anthem" solo, followed by his rousing duet with his wife in the "Instead-of Song" and tops himself later with his "Useless Song" near the play's end. He is sheer evil and sheer comedy, wonderfully defined, with a great voice.

The 7-piece on-stage orchestra, conducted by James Sampliner, is properly Brechtian-raw and grating and poisonous when it should be, honey-sweet when romantic duets set it awash in a moon over Dock Street or Polly's nostalgia for Mackie and me.

The only regret of this reviewer is to realize there is little chance to return and see this current production several more times, just for the sheer joy and talented energy it provides. One's impulse is to urge you to go, go, go, warning with the realization that it may be hard to get a ticket.

But if you can capture one, you will be delighted that you did!