The Threepenny Opera: A Snarl of Theses
B. Iden Payne Theatre,
through October 23
Running time: 2 hrs, 50 min
What is it about that asterisk in the playbill denoting that a student’s work is in partial fulfillment of a Masters of Fine Arts degree in acting or design or directing that winds up limiting the effectiveness of that work, as if in the execution of this part of one’s thesis, the student forgets that it is the production that is the unifying goal, not his or her constituent part, no matter the art, the skill, or the craft of that part?
This UT Department of Theatre & Dance production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s groundbreaking, dark, politically sharp re-tooling of John Gay’s merry, strumpet-laden original, The Beggar’s Opera, is brimful with startling designs and more onstage talent than has been seen in UT theatres in ages. But never does the play gel into a unified whole. From the famous opening number, “Mack the Knife,” through endless plodding scene shifts, this Threepenny Opera moves at a snail’s pace, with few moments of incisive acting and subversive political commentary, let alone the nasty wit that playwright Brecht and composer Weill dredge up in their seedy London underground of beggars, thieves, rapists, and cutthroats. Almost all of the principal characters seem miscast, or, perhaps, cast for reasons of academic achievement. Only Pam Christian (no longer a student) has a full comprehension of the world of this play. Christian, as Mrs. Peachum, is, thankfully, in a position to drive much of the plot as the whacked-out matron who tries to destroy the wily bigamist MacHeath. When Jill Leberknight, as MacHeath’s jilted whore Jenny, sings her “Pirate Jenny” song of manic vengeance, she too evokes some of that nastiness of 1920s Berlin that makes Threepenny such wicked fun. Scotty Phillips, by the third act, seems to have grown into his role as conniving Mr. Peachum, snapping orders at his coterie of beggars or mentally outplaying the chief of police.
But these moments are far too few and far between. Director Lucien Douglas, whose direction of Shaw’s Misalliance last season was so sharp and rich, has allowed this bulky production to lumber on to its inevitable conclusion, a collection of pretty designs and unsure actors, rather drably going about their business, only seldom it seems on the same page of their individual theses as one another.
This article appears in October 15 • 1999.