I've been dreading this. I studied Brecht a little at Uni and I didn't much care for his approach. Sometimes going through "100 Great Plays" feels like doing homework, and that's how my approach to this play felt.
Brecht is quite into a deconstructed approach to theatre... suspending the suspension of disbelief... and he wanted the audience at all times to remember they were in a performance, and I think his "cleverness" sometimes interferes with the enjoyableness (enjoyability?) of theatre.
I do like that he liked to subvert the expectations of theatre, and individually I like a bunch of his techniques and focuses. ..breaking the fourth wall, inserting music (which seems obvious to a musical theatre loving audience today, but there was a time where it was more obviously stepping outside of the realism of a situation), and using theatre as a forum for political and philosophical ideas that may lead to critical thinking and the momentum to make change in the world once the audience leaves the theatre. Big tick on that last item.
But there were approaches and attitudes of his that I just don't agree with. He advocated 'Non-Aristotlean drama', or epic drama, in which the works can be cut up into smaller self contained bits. He claimed epic dramas, he felt, had no interest in the any investment of the audience's emotions, doesn't have an objective or a finishing point and enables the drama to be show humans interacting with larger forces in society and not just each other.
He didn't want the audience to experience catharsis but wanted them left with uncertainty and conundrums (which, ok, the latter CAN be a very good part of theatre but so too can catharsis). He didn't necessarily want an audience to identify with characters. he liked employing disorienting elements like overly bright lighting. He wanted an audience to be reminded throughout that this is not real, it's a construction, as a way of echoing that our lives are constructions and so we are capable of reconstructing ourselves and the world around us.
Overall, when I was studying Brecht and at times since, when people reference him or rave about him, I feel it's a little bit like the emperor's new clothes, or when people are talking about Pink Floyd or Dire Straits... both of whom I like but the degree of reverence directed towards them seems a bit overstated. In short, while I like some of what Brecht is doing, I also feel he's a bit of a wanker. There I said it.
I also have an issue adding musicals to this list, and that's certainly not because of disliking musical theatre. I bloody love it. But if I include the musicals I love this would be well over 200 great plays and I'm not keeping up as it is.
Also, "The Threepenny Opera" finds itself in a debate about whether it actually IS musical theatre, or is it Opera. I wont even go there because what do I know? But including this "musical" and leaving out so many ones that I think are far better doesn't sit well. However, I am trying to give due deference to what is widely regarded as one of the great plays, and Brecht certainly has a lot of disciples, so I will include this (as one of his most renowned plays) and a few of his other works for a sense of completeness. Note. I wrote this introduction before watching and reading the play.
The history of how the story came to be
The playwright's intent for "The Threepenny Opera" is a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Playwright in this case is something of a shared title. Brecht adapted this play from "The Beggar's Opera", written by John Gay (words) and Johann Pepusch (music) in 1728. It was a ballad opera, meaning it used popular musical styles, often spoken dialog and were performed to comic effect. This play in particular took the piss out of the love of Italian Operas by the well-to-do.
Brecht, using a translation by Elisabeth Hauptman, stuck with the original characters and plot and changed the libretto and quite a bit of the music, with the new pieces written by Kurt Weill and Francois Villon. And just on that, Brecht used the songs by Frenchman Villon, translated by K L Ammer, somewhat freely (ie without permission) and when criticised about it replied he had a "fundamental laxity in questions of literary property." Boo. Hiss. Am I getting into the fourth wall breaking enough?
So they've got the original piece and reworked it into German with some modified thematic focuses, and subsequently the revised work has been translated back to English (and many other languages). Kind of like money laundering, but with scripts.
The Show itself
I have to say, I quite like the base story. MacHeath, or Mack the Knife (yep, that guy... and I'll come back to that) is the leader of a gang that robs and murders, commits arson and rapes. He's a calculating, dishonest, amoral and (quite bravely for its time) sexually ambiguous lothario, obsessed with sex and serial non-monogamy, and very selfishly focused on violence, money and power. Not the nicest guy.
He falls for and marries Polly Peachum, whose father is also an underworld figure... in his case, the boss of a protection racket enacted by all of beggars in London. Jonathan Peachum controls his crew by coercion, threats and actual violence. Also not a nice guy.
Mr Peachum is not at all impressed by the marriage of his daughter to MacHeath, and has MacHeath arrested and sentenced to be hanged. But, with help from some of MacHeath's exes, and a Chief of Police who is a former army buddy, he is freed. MacHeath is later released and one's again faces the hangman's noose but a deliberately unbelievable deus ex machina royal pardon, helps him avoid the gallows and bestows upon him titles, land and riches, he avoids the gallows.
As I said, it's a good yarn. It includes good v evil stereotypes, some character trajectories, and a storyline that might run adjacent to "Oliver Swift", "Sweeney Todd" and "Jack the Ripper". And, musically, it has a couple of bangers. I did not know, before embarking on this play, that that musical nugget of golf Mack The Knife, sung by every crooner from Bobby Darrin, to Sinatra, to Buble and beyond, came from a play/musical, much less this one. You live and you learn.
But back to the show. I enjoyed it a lot more than I anticipated, and I will make separate comments about the versions of the show I saw. I actually think it was more enjoyable than I anticipated because Brecht didn't entirely stick to his blueprint for epic theatre. Where he believes that songs should be alienating and should disrupt the flow of the show, and should not create an emotional empathy with the characters, I felt they did those assisted the story and did build some connections with the character. He likes songs to highlight the difference between what a character says, and what they actually do and I didn't pick up on that so much.
Some of his guidelines for songs in shows were more evident. He felt musical numbers should be visually distinct, with different lighting and staging. He believed wanted singers to remain detached, for songs to explicate social meaning above personal emotion and he wanted the music itself to be harsh and dissonant to prevent the audience from being lulled into a nice melody. And in the versions I saw, these goals were successful, The music was jarring (I didn't care for that), the performers didn't display a lot of emotional connection (which felt more like directorial and acting choices that I didn't love) and the staging and look of musical numbers was quite distinct... and I liked that.
The versions I saw
One of the frustrating parts about covering Brecht's work is that it's a lot harder to find online. There are fewer film versions, fewer extant staged versions that have been recorded and the quality of those that they are is... variable. There was a National Theatre version with Rory Kinnear in the lead (which even toured Australia) that I think could well win me over much more substantially... alas, I could not find it.
The first version I saw was the 2015 production by New Line Theatre. I don't know anything about New Line Theatre and the video version on Youtube comes without many details, including the names of the performers. This version looked, as I mentioned before, like it could sit alongside "Oliver Swift", "Sweeney Todd" and "Jack the Ripper"... a very Victorian look. The band played, presumably deliberately, like an Oompah Band... lots of tuba and brass, and was (again, presumably deliberately) quite jarring in places.
Mr and Mrs Peachum were very close to the Thernardiers from "Les Miserables" in look, characterisation and performance style. The actresses playing Jenny Diver, Suky Tawdry and Polly Peachum were all quite good singers. I thought old MacHeath himself was an interesting choice... not as intimidatory as the script suggests and I think he got lost in the chaos a bit. There were a few good songs, but not a lot of standouts (possibly exactly what Brecht wanted?). It had a cohesive Victorian look and feel and would no doubt appeal to fans of Gilbert and Sullivan, light opera and early musical theatre.
The second version I saw was spectacularly badly (and I'm assuming) illegally recorded. It seems to have been filmed from a phone with frequent weird and unclear zooms, and scans of black space at the person's feet etc. However the version it is filming, the 2006 Broadway revival, looks like it might have been amazing. With Alan Cumming in the lead and with Cyndi Lauper, Ana Gasteyer and Jim Dale on board, this version has a very different feel... quite punk and anarchistic There's a little bit of "Cabaret" thrown into the feel and a whole lot of subversiveness.
Cumming is deliciously menacing and predatory, made even more emphatic by a harsh use of his native Scottish accent. He leans heavily into a more aggressive sexuality and is more openly sexually ambiguous, particularly with police chief Tiger Brown, opening up narrative possibilities. I didn't watch out the entire version as the gymnastics of the videographer was giving me head spins, but it did open my eyes and my mind to different presentation options.
After I had already seen all of the first of these two versions, and bits of the second, I found that there was a full cinematic version of this available to see, which I didn't initially see as it's labelled "Mack The Knife" (acknowledging that it's an adaptation and not a direct performance of the play. It was released in 1989 with Raul Julia (who'd previously played MacHeath on stage) up front and Richard Harris, Julie Waters, Bill Nighy and Roger Daltry in the mix. I hope to watch this as time permits.
My thoughts
I think the potentials of this show have won me over. While I don't love the music/songs and don't agree with making the music especially jagged and a few other Brechtian principals, I do like the storyline. And that's a whole angle in itself... if you're just this as a musical then you need to bring in that whole axis of assessment.
But I like that it is subversive. I liked the breaking of the fourth wall for spoken stage directions. I like that the lead is kind of unlikeable but at times, depending on the direction and acting choices, that you connect to him a little. I like it's flagrant sexuality. I like that the theme of capitalism and how those with power control those without is marinated throughout he whole piece. I really liked the deus ex machina ending that pokes fun at musical happy endings while still reinforcing the capricious misuse of power angle.
This is another play with an exceedingly long line of great performers who have appeared in productions of it. I'm still not particularly won over by Brecht, who I still think was a bit of self-important knob, or his guidelines for theatre, but I could very much see a version of this in Goulburn and that it would be quite popular. There really is a lot of room for a director and ensemble to put their stamp on this. And despite my misgivings, I do have to say it's a great and influential work.
Brecht is still not my favourite playwright and I'm dreading the difficult online search for the other three plays of his I'm looking for, but this play has already moved the needle ever so slightly in my appreciation of Brecht.
Materials accessed
- "The Threepenny Opera" - script (1928). Available in several places online for free including this version from pdfcoffee.online.
- "The Threepenny Opera" - filmed play (2015). Part one of the New Line Theatre production freely available on Youtube. Part 2 also available.
- "The Threepenny Opera" - filmed play (2006). Dodgy quality filming of the 2006 Broadway production freely available on Youtube.
- "Mack the Knife" - film (1989). Cinematic production freely available on Youtube.
