Threepenny ante

Trinity captures the spirit of Brecht / Weill

by Carolyn Clay

THE THREEPENNY OPERA. Book and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. Music by Kurt Weill. Book translated by Robert David McDonald. Lyrics translated by Jeremy Sams. Directed by Alan MacVey. Musical direction by Amanda Dehnert. Set design by Michael McGarty. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by Dan Kotlowitz. Choreography by Kelli Wicke Davis. With William Damkoehler, Brian McEleney, Anne Scurria, Jennifer Mudge Tucker, Barry Press, Ellen McLaughlin, Stephen Berenson, Barbara Meek, Dan Welch, Jenn Schulte, Stephan Wolfert, Eric Tucker, Max Vogler, Sean Meehan, Doug Brandt, Anne Gardiner, and musicians Amanda Dehnert, Kevin Fallon, Steven Jobe, Daniel Perlin, and Raechel Robidoux. At Trinity Repertory Company through October 11.

Trinity Repertory Company's The Threepenny Opera wears a big grin and carries a sharp knife. But it's its Jenny Diver -- Ellen McLaughlin, far from her seraphic flappings as the original Angel of Angels in America -- who cuts the deepest. This mean 70th-birthday party for the Bertolt Brecht / Kurt Weill classic begins in the tawdry sanctum of those beggar-deploying entrepreneurs, the Peachums, sans the street singer's warbling of "Mack the Knife." When "The Flick Knife Song" (as it's titled here) finally makes an appearance, it is McLaughlin's hollow-cheeked, Bronx-tinged wounded tough of a Jenny -- one-time consort of the charismatic MacHeath -- who sings it. Thanks to her concentrated delivery and Jeremy Sams's brute translation of the lyrics, you understand just why she turned Mack in. "He's a rapist / He's a sadist," spits McLaughlin, "And they haven't stopped him yet."

The chill cast over the production by Jenny's bitter love-hate comes none too soon, as Alan McVey's gritty, enjoyable production suffers, toward the beginning, from being a bit too merry. As has been observed, the Mr. and Mrs. Peachum of Brian McEleney and Anne Scurria are closer to the Thenardiers of Les Misérables, more comical than ruthless. Scurria, stooped and disheveled, jump-starting her heart at the mere thought of MacHeath, is extremely funny. And she sings with aplomb even while balancing an ever-present cigarette on her lower lip (she also adds a verse about Clinton to "The Song of the Sexual Imperative"). But she's a cartoon. McEleney's jaunty Peachum at least counters his capering with true, if smily-faced, viciousness.

Set in the presumably near future (Victoria's coronation is replaced by that of the present Prince William!), the multimedia production is nonetheless innovative and well sung, particularly by Jennifer Mudge Tucker's coarsely romantic Polly Peachum and William Damkoehler's Bret Mavericky MacHeath. And it's perched on a mesh-encased rockpile of information-age detritus used by the Peachums in their exploitation of society, sympathy, and the poor. Old computers lie about like corpses as beggar-employees man Channel 36-Auction-type phone banks (1-800-PEACHUM), taking donations from suckers moved by a video that features Polly as a bogus Sally Struthers clutching a downtrodden child. (One is reminded of the false footage of a fleeing Albanian ingenue with kitten in that more recent satire of lust, chicanery, and spin, Wag the Dog.)

Threepenny is, of course, itself a rewrite -- of John Gay's 1728 The Beggar's Opera. And though Brecht's budding-Marxist tale of love and criminality in Soho, with its brash and jazzy Weill score, wowed Berlin in 1928, it didn't catch on here until 1954, when the now-standard Marc Blitzstein adaptation became an Off Broadway hit (with Weill's widow, Lotte Lenya, reprising her 1928 turn as Jenny). Blitzstein's lyrics are certainly more musical than Sams's, but Sams's are more savage -- presumably they're more literal translations of Brecht's. The Trinity staging pairs Sams's lyrics (which the American Repertory Theatre used in 1995) with a recent translation of the book by Robert David McDonald. According to the press material, both translations were chosen for their "edgy language that is true to the in-the-gutter tone of Brecht's original German."

Indeed, McDonald's MacHeath indulges in such Mametesque turns of phrase as "in-fucking-competence." Both book and lyrics are also peppered with contemporary interpolations, among them this from "The Jealousy Duet": "Two make a pair / Not one or three or seven/Like Sonny and Cher / Though Sonny is in heaven." Brecht and/or Blitzstein purists will not approve. But the spirit of MacVey's staging is true to both Threepenny Opera and Trinity Rep tradition. It's roughhewn and aggressive, if perhaps lacking sufficient bite. You know things can't be quite right when it's not the shark's teeth but Jenny's hand clapped to the back of Mackie's neck (as heat meets hostility on "The Whorehouse Tango") that seems to draw blood.

Yet the singers and musicians, under the musical direction of Amanda Dehnert, do surprisingly well by Weill's score -- a virtuosic compendium that runs the gamut from fight song to love song and from Preservation Hall to Handel. Last season's Trinity take on The Music Man was a popular triumph, but it was not, to my mind, sung well enough to achieve its intended marriage of true professionalism and community embrace. The Brecht-Weill songs are well-suited to actor-singers, and even McLaughlin, whose optimal range is more limited than her artistry, wipes the floor with them.

Tucker, who in The Music Man struggled to emulate the bell soprano of original Marian-the-Librarian Barbara Cook and portray her character at the same time, here acts the stuffing out of her songs, including a shrewd/lush "Pirate Jenny" and a full frontal assault on that paean to physical attraction, "The Ballad of Mr. Right" ("The Barbara Song"), which she delivers while stripping off her bridal regalia and cavorting in gray cotton Calvins. As for Damkoehler, he makes a dapper, middle-aged MacHeath, with a sensitive streak if little glint of danger. And he brings both full voice and increasing desperation to the caged Mack's second-act songs. Barry Press is a Mandy Patinkin-ish Tiger Brown, that exemplar of lined-pocket loyalty and corrupt law enforcement; he and Damkoehler team for a rousing rendition of "The Squaddies' Song" ("The Cannon Song") that drives home the racism-beneath-the-camaraderie in Sams's lyrics. And Jenn Schulte's leopard-clad vixen-with-a-voice is ample proof that Bette Midler would make a great Lucy Brown.