Happy Ending

This has been quite the adventure. We’ve learned more and more about this show as we’ve run it. And it’s not over yet.

The audience for our one preview performance was very quiet. We weren’t sure if they were baffled or bored or horrified. But then on opening night, you would have thought we were performing Spelling Bee or Cry-Baby. Big laughs, all night long, from an amazingly responsive and big audience.

The following night, the audience was totally engaged, lots of them leaning forward all night long, and laughing fairly often, but mostly very low, very dark laughter. And we could tell from their laughs that they were following our intricate plot perfectly. They knew who everybody was, and who had what to gain. At first, the lack of those big laughs freaked out the actors because they thought something had gone “wrong” from Friday to Saturday night.

But all the rest of the performances have been like that third one. Apparently, opening night was a comedy false-positive. I think the response we’ve gotten from later audiences is probably the “normal” response to this show. I had been thinking about it as this outrageous comedy, but I don’t think it really is (for normal people, anyway).

I think really it’s more like Sweeney Todd (duh! I’ve been calling Sweeney “Brechtian” my entire adult life), a very dark tale that has dark humor to (barely) leaven it. It’s grim and morally bankrupt, and carries the extra weight of being truthful still today (though hopefully exaggerated), and everybody knows it. They find the Peachums really funny and really horrifying. Same with the vaudeville-comical but murderous gang, etc.

If you think about it in those terms, the audience’s response has been perfect.

So many people – a couple dozen maybe? – have used the word “wonderful” to me after performances. Several have sincerely thanked me for letting them experience Threepenny. They love the overall experience of it, even if they’re not laughing as much as opening night.

Of course, some people have really struggled with the show, for various reasons.

Considering the thousands of different productions of this show throughout the last century, in many styles, in many languages, it’s funny to me that some reviewers become Instant Brecht Experts (just add water) when they review Threepenny, telling us what we did “right” and “wrong,” where we were sufficiently “Brechtian” and where we fell short. A couple of them scolded us because our actors actually play the characters, rather than standing outside them, commenting on them.

I think these folks misunderstand something basic about making theatre. There’s no fun or challenge in imitating other productions. Anybody can do that. And there’s never only one way to do a show. It’s rare that a New Line production resembles a show’s original production. In most cases, we completely discard the original production, and start from scratch, as if it’s a new show.

I’ll always remember, in the early 1990s, reading an interview with director Jerry Zaks, talking about the revival of Guys and Dolls, and how he approached it not as a classic, but as a new, untested piece. And the quality and artistry of that production is a testament to that approach.

In the case of Threepenny, I had no interest in reproducing Erich Engel’s original Berlin production. What spoke to audiences in 1928 Berlin is different from what speaks to audiences in 2015 St. Louis. Our cultural markers are different, storytelling conventions are different, the role of women in society is different, conversations about rape are different… even though some economic and moral issues may be the same.

So we created a Threepenny that is a blend of Brecht’s theoretical ideas, what we can know about Engel’s original production, the original 1954 production of this translation, the New Line house style, and the neo musical comedy style that has evolved from Threepenny over the last century. This is not the production Brecht would have staged. This is a New Line production of Brecht and Weill’s material, for our audience in 2015. We’re not Brecht’s employees; we’re his collaborators.

And besides all that, I don’t know that these reviewers understand that what Brecht wrote about theatre was often pretty different from what Brecht actually did in the theatre. Throughout his career, Brecht worried because people enjoyed Threepenny too much, they got engaged more than he thought they should, they cared about the characters too much, etc. And all that is true because Brecht was a great writer, and he couldn’t help but write engaging, emotional, truthful human drama. Just like Mother Courage and his other plays.

My job in directing Threepenny was not to adhere slavishly to abstract theories of theatre. Our job is to honor the text and music, understand the story the writers have given us, and tell that story as clearly as we possibly can. And that’s what we’re doing. And it’s working…

“The Threepenny Opera is the oldest show New Line Theatre has ever staged. It might also be the hottest, the sharpest and the best.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“New Line Theatre’s near-perfect production of The Threepenny Opera.” – Paul Friswold, The Riverfront Times

“Fresh, vital and deliciously subversive” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News

“Sinister and sizzling …New Line Theatre gives us this stage noir classic with all its wickedness intact. It’s a pitch-black masterpiece that sucks you in with its nightmarish charms.” – Chris Gibson, BroadwayWorld

“This 1928 show, one of the highlights of the German Weimar period, seems to have snapped out of hopelessness and morphed into the first rebellious musical of the ‘post-Ferguson’ era.” – Richard Green, TalkinBroadway

On the other hand, one reviewer thought we got most of it wrong. Another complained that we weren’t using accents, because (she declared) the humor all depends on the cockney accents. I pointed out to her that this translation of the show was written by an American for American actors in an American production that did not use British accents.

Why would someone just make up something like that…?

The silliest of the reviewers praised the acting, the songs, and other things, but declared at great length the show itself no longer worthy. He ended his review with “You’ll find much to enjoy in New Line’s Threepenny Opera, but if you’re looking for shattering, revolutionary theatre, this isn’t it.” What the fuck is he talking about? Who said it was? I doubt seriously that anyone who’s bought a ticket to our show did so because they were in search of “shattering, revolutionary theatre.” We certainly didn’t promote it that way. We’re producing a 1928 musical in a 1954 translation. We weren’t expecting any shattering.

So much of this guy’s review was all about how the show’s not what it was a hundred years ago. Well, no, Einstein, it’s not. It’s something different now, for different audiences in different times. The miracle is how much it still entertains and speaks to audiences. But he was too wrapped up in his narrow, weirdly eager condemnation to see that. Pretentious hack.

I think most people are buying tickets because they’re hearing that it’s a great, funny, dark, wild ride, and a great stage classic that most people have never seen before. Musical theatre fans are coming because they know this is the ancestor of Sweeney Todd, Cabaret, Chicago, Urinetown, Bat Boy, and so many other great shows we all love.

Pamela Katz writes in her wonderful book The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink, “The possibility of misunder­standing Threepenny was part of its charm.” That may sound really strange, but how having worked on it, and watching people react to it, it’s true. Maybe that’s the most cynical thing about Threepenny – it doesn’t give a shit if you get it or not.

Despite what the pretentious hack thinks, part of why this show has gotten such great reviews and is selling so well, is that it still (or maybe once again) speaks to the choking economics of our times and the corrupting power of money in our government, both of which are already becoming major themes in the 2016 Presidential election. More than at any other time in recent memory, Threepenny speaks to post-2008 America.

This is one of our best selling shows and there’s a reason for that. It’s really entertaining – though admittedly in a different way than we initially thought – and it’s really, really insightful.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott
from The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre http://ift.tt/1Mwhs5E