Berliner Ensemble present Threepenny Opera at BAM.
It is entirely appropriate that this year's NextWave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music chose to mount the acerbic Three- penny Opera (in a production by the Berliner Ensemble and Robert Wilson) during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Coincidence, but entirely appropriate.
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Jazz-Oper is well known in this country as the source of "Mack the Knife", a jazz standard and a pop hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. In this production, using the original German text and the bare-bones vision of director Robert Wilson, Threepenny regains its sharp teeth. Brecht's bitter commentary about man's inhumanity was especially resonant last night--the audience roared approval at that line about bankers being worse than murderers.
Mr. Wilson's staging emphasizes Brecht's "theater of alienation." His production removed most of the sets, trappings and even props from the action, forcing the listener to focus on the text. The effect: this sordid tale of London's back alleys (based on The Beggar's Opera by British composer John Gay) becomes a strange, alien ritual, conducted by just-landed extraterrestrials with the rogue Macheath as the sacrificial victim.
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| Swinging London: Macheath (Stefan Kurt, center) about to be hanged in Act III of Threepenny Opera. Photo by Leslie Leslie-Spinks © 2011 Brooklyn Academy of Music. |
It is entirely appropriate that this year's NextWave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music chose to mount the acerbic Three- penny Opera (in a production by the Berliner Ensemble and Robert Wilson) during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Coincidence, but entirely appropriate.
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Jazz-Oper is well known in this country as the source of "Mack the Knife", a jazz standard and a pop hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. In this production, using the original German text and the bare-bones vision of director Robert Wilson, Threepenny regains its sharp teeth. Brecht's bitter commentary about man's inhumanity was especially resonant last night--the audience roared approval at that line about bankers being worse than murderers.
Mr. Wilson's staging emphasizes Brecht's "theater of alienation." His production removed most of the sets, trappings and even props from the action, forcing the listener to focus on the text. The effect: this sordid tale of London's back alleys (based on The Beggar's Opera by British composer John Gay) becomes a strange, alien ritual, conducted by just-landed extraterrestrials with the rogue Macheath as the sacrificial victim.
