The Threepenny Opera is a Marxist morality play about the London underworld—and a famous murderer named Mack the Knife—written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. It has been translated into dozens of languages and performed tens of thousands of times. But you wouldn’t know why based on the current production by Seattle Shakespeare Company, directed by Stephanie Shine and performed at Intiman. This Opera is soft and soporific, suffering from the same problem that plagued The Lieutenant of Inishmore, directed by Kurt Beattie at ACT last October. Both shows began with good text and good actors, but resulted in total nothingness onstage. Why? Poor direction from people who should know better.
Pretty much every actor onstage—from Julie Briskman (who scored as Ann Landers in The Lady with All the Answers) to Russell Hodgkinson (whose performance as an inveterate drunk in The Seafarer still haunts my memory)—has done excellent work elsewhere. But under the direction of Shine, they are reduced to impotent clowns. None of them seems capable of kicking a cat, much less killing a man. (Full disclosure: I left partway through. I had some actual criminals I wanted to hang out with.)
A note to artistic directors of a certain age: If you’re thinking of making a show about murderers and thieves, you must give your show tight pacing, urgency, and moments of real fear to keep your audience worried. That way, the humor and political messages will actually smack your audience instead of washing over us like so much warm mush. Plus: I realize you’re trying to save money by directing your own shows instead of hiring outsiders. But if you’re going to produce shows about crime and desperation, you would do much better for your theaters by shoving a cut of your paycheck toward a younger director who has a leaner mind and a sharper knife. Remember (for example) Crime and Punishment and Electra directed by Sheila Daniels? Or The Adding Machine and Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet directed by John Langs? Those were shows about murder that had ideas and driving, vital, frightening force—not the fusty feeling of a director just pushing actors around the stage out of habit.
If you cannot hold our attention, you have lost the game.
NewsWrights United is bringing a new theatrical-journalism project to Capitol Hill’s Erickson Theater this weekend. Founded by Stranger Genius Paul Mullin, talented writer-director Dawson Nichols, and former Seattle Post-Intelligencer science journalist Tom Paulson, NewsWrights wrote an entertaining and cutting “living newspaper” play about the fall of one of Seattle’s dailies called It’s Not in the P-I. This time, they’ve put together The New New News—about the rise of local blogs, how the Seattle Times got a Pulitzer Prize for its readers’ Twitter coverage of the Maurice Clemmons manhunt, and what happened to Art Thiel when he started his own blog and had to get tangled with selling his own ads. Judging by their last effort and the seriousness of their material, The New New News should be scarier than the ersatz Mack the Knife.
Also in previews: Some poor fools think C. S. Lewis was good only for children’s books about Narnia. But the man had scorching-hot insight into what it means to be a grown-up. His Screwtape Letters, dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien, should be required reading in all American high schools. In it, a devil advises an underling on how to tempt a man down to hell. No matter what you think about Lewis’s Anglicanism, The Screwtape Letters contains some of the most horrifyingly accurate sentences about human frailty: “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,” “All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.” This celebrated adaptation of the Letters by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean probably contains good performances, if you trust the New York Times critics. But it will certainly contain excellent, harrowing text. 
This article has been updated since its original publication.
A couple of things here…
Which translation was used? There have been at least five English-language translations of the Brecht text. Only geeks like me would care, but geeks like me are the core audience for Brecht/Weill.
How long did you last? One act? Two?
You really needed to stay through Act Two to hear Gina Marie Russell belt out a solo and a duet. She is why no glass is allowed inside the Intiman.
I think the translation used was by Mark Blitzstein.
For me, the first act had too many songs with too little plot movement, but the main problem was the casting of Mack was off. The actor playing him has done admirable work in some other roles, but here, while his Mack was charming and debonaire, he lacked even a hint of danger, as though he was actually performing in The Importance of Being Earnest. So that when everyone onstage is continually talking about how dangerous this guy is, it doesn’t add up. See the 1932 film version and you can see what a dangerous Mack might be like. It’s not an easy combination to pull off and it didn’t work in this production.
Disappointed at the choice of translation. Blitzstein eviscerated the beating heart of Brecht’s biting commentary and replaced it with 1950’s watered-down treacle. Very poor choice.
From what I saw of the Wednesday preview, all the women were terrific, but the lead men were tepid. Act 1 was boring; Act 2 was better (the women finally got to shine a bit) but no one seemed to have a lick of direction, and there were absolutely no stakes. I left before Act 3: as Brendan says elsewhere, theater-goers aren’t hostages. I ducked into a free show at the Vera Project and watched some kids put everything they had into making some very loud music with passion and maybe even a bit of danger.
I guess for some good Weimar Republic/ Kurt Weill music, I’ll have to wait for the next ‘Love Markets’ show.
Brendan Kiley is my hero – he’s the only good theatre critic in Seattle. He is EXACTLY right with his review of this show. I also left early, during the second intermission, because I just couldn’t take it anymore. This production was poorly directed and poorly musically directed. All of the actors hired, except for Jayne Muirhead and Julie Briskman, were woefully unqualified for the task of performing the style of the piece as well as singing the difficult music. Especially bad were the two younger women who were screechy and Mack who was just dull. The production was completely AMATEURISH.
The Love Markets will bring passion and danger to the new Can Can on Wednesday, March 2.
http://www.thecancan.com/
Someone let Stephanie Shine direct again?
Could somebody please stop Stephanie Shine before she wipes her ass with another good play?
This has to stop.
Hey Stranger: Is Brendan Kiley really the best theatre critic you can come up with? REALLY? He comes to shows intoxicated, leaves early and writes reviews that are more gossip column than ACTUAL REVIEWS.
(Not that a gossip column wouldn’t be welcome. You could have broken the Intiman embezzlement story months ago.)
In Seattle there are hundreds of professional theatre artists, thousands of amateur ones, and tens of thousands of theatre-goers. We are crying out for a critic who isn’t incompetent (Misha) or catty or bitter or stupid. We want someone to intelligently review the plays we are in and the plays we see; Someone to help us find out what’s good, what’s bad and what’s trying too hard. Only then can Seattle’s theatre scene reach above labels like ‘Regional’ or ‘Fringe.’
We need someone to start an intelligent discussion about theatre in Seattle.
Step up, Stranger.
It might be interesting for you to see the performance of another famous Brecht play, “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” at the Jones Playhouse. All original music by James Jewell and directed by Alyson Roux. They have taken it in an apocalyptic hillbilly direction that is, in my opinion, just absurd enough to work.
Jones Playhouse – 4045 University Way NE. Seattle
Here is the schedule:
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Tuesday, March 01, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Wednesday, March 02, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Thursday, March 03, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Friday, March 04, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, March 05, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, March 06, 2011 at 2:00 PM
Wednesday, March 09, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Friday, March 11, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 2:00 PM
what’s with all the fucking spam self advertising in comments? Get some class people.
Sadly, they used the Blitzstein translation. While Blitzstein deserves credit for bringing Brecht’s work to the attention of American audiences in the chilly Red Scare 1950s, he basically did so by turning edgy 1920s Weimar cabaret into an acceptable mid-century Broadway musical. Almost all of the sexuality is suppressed, and a good bit of the violence (no arson killing 7 children in Soho, no abortion in Mack & Jenny’s past, etc.)
It’s a pretty candy-assed translation of the “Threepenny Opera” to be presenting on a Seattle stage in 2011.
I have to second EmilySavesThe Day. I haven’t peeked at reviews on here in a long time, and now I remember why. This isn’t a review: it’s self-congratulatory arrogance.
Get a genuine theatre critic who can manage to stay for the entirety of the performance and maybe it will be worth reading the theatre page again. Whatever amateurishness there was in the production is surely matched – if not exceeded – by the amateurishness of this ‘review’. Childish in the extreme.
“A note to artistic directors of a certain age: … you would do much better for your theaters by shoving a cut of your paycheck toward a younger director who has a leaner mind and a sharper knife.” Now that is an annoying statement (as well as ageist.