Theatre in Review: The Threepenny Opera (Atlantic Theatre Company)

	Photo: Kevin Thomas Garcia

Martha Clarke's new production of The Threepenny Opera got mixed-to-negative reviews, but this may not mean much, because The Threepenny Opera always seems to get mixed reviews. This is partly because everyone has a different idea of what it should be, which isn't surprising, since no Threepenny seems to resemble any other. A perusal of the last several New York revivals reveals markedly varying song lists: Numbers come and go, are assigned to different characters, and are arranged in different running orders. The action can be divided into two acts or three. The running time can vary by as much as 40 minutes. This leads to all sorts of apples-and-oranges comparisons; it probably doesn't help that the last two Threepenny Operas in New York were dispiriting affairs: John Dexter's lifeless 1989 staging, starring Sting, and Scott Elliott's chaotic 2006 revival, which wasted the talents of Alan Cumming, Jim Dale, Ana Gasteyer, and Nellie McKay. (This production was largely a bisexual romp, with drag queens and plenty of coke-snorting, its main political comments being a scene in which members of the company paraded in T-shirts, which, under black light, revealed the eerily glowing logos of several multinational corporations. Take that, capitalism!)

Set against these misadventures, Clarke's production looks pretty good. Using the Blitzstein translation and rearranged into two acts with a trim running time of a little more than two hours, this is a fat-free interpretation with a clear narrative line -- not always a hallmark of Threepenny revivals -- plenty of bad attitude about the pieties of bourgeois life in the Weimar Era, and a cast of gifted vocalists who prove surprisingly suited to the acrid score by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

I use the word "surprisingly" largely in reference to Laura Osnes, the Polly Peachum of this occasion. In her early Broadway days, I dismissed Osnes as a professional goody two-shoes, a cookie-cutter light soprano with little or no personality. I now withdraw the comment. Audiences used to seeing her as Cinderella or as Hope Harcourt, Anything Goes' proper socialite, will get a shock at her fierce, remorseless delivery here. (Her Bonnie Parker, in the short-lived Bonnie and Clyde wasn't as tough as this.) She is especially powerful in "Barbara Song" (which is often assigned to another character), an account of how easily she strung men along, without giving anything away, until she met "a mean man and a lean man" who taught her the joys of not remaining perpendicular. She also shines in "Jealousy Duet," in which Polly verbally dukes it out with Lucy -- a tough, statuesque Lilli Cooper, six months pregnant and brandishing a cigarette -- over the jailed Macheath.

The cast offers many other pleasures, as well: Check out the look on Mary Beth Peil's face at the end of "Ballad of Sexual Dependency," the life draining out of her features and her eyes turning frigid. Peil is Mrs. Peachum, willing to commit any crime to maintain her family's respectability, and she is a formidable presence throughout. As the Street Singer, John Kelly's rendition of "Ballad of Mack the Knife" has a harsh surface and a strong undertone of regret. And Sally Murphy, clad in Weimar-era scanties, makes Jenny, the whore who betrays Macheath, into the kind of lady you don't want to encounter on a dark street. This is made especially clear in "Pirate Jenny," her fantasy of annihilating the men who have used her, which she delivers with a quiet intensity that rivets one's attention. Rick Holmes is an amusingly corrupt Tiger Brown, the law officer who befriends Macheath, struggling mightily to keep him out of jail while selecting his outfit for the imminent coronation of Queen Victoria.

The cast is not uniformly ideal. As Macheath, Michael Park has the right look -- of a slightly overstuffed and overgroomed businessman -- and he handles the songs well, but missing is any sense of danger; he isn't the Mack the Knife of the opening song, a mass murderer who kills without remorse. F. Murray Abraham, the production's Mr. Peachum, seems ill at ease in a musical; he could pick up a few tips from his colleagues about how to sell a song.

The production has a simple, strong look that recalls expressionist films and theatre of the period, with the characters, clad in Donna Zakowska's extremely evocative Weimar-era clothing, often trapped in a harsh spotlight against one of the slanted walls of Robert Israel's set. Christopher Akerlind's lighting often suffuses the stage in acid-yellow single source looks, creating shadows that dwarf the performers. Clive Goodwin's sound manages an excellent balance between the music (which is reinforced, coming as it does from an upstage alcove) and the voices, which don't sound reinforced at all.

And Clarke's staging has many arresting moments: Macheath getting the attention of the room by savagely plunging a knife into a pineapple; Macheath and Polly caught in a slash of light, having sex against a wall; and Lucy's assertion to Macheath, "I love you so much I'd rather see you on a gallows than in some other girl's arms."

One can imagine a Threepenny Opera with more humor -- the show is never as funny as its reputation suggests --but this is a solid, often inspired, production that does far more than any other I've seen to suggest why the show endures. At one point, Macheath asks the audience, "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?" If you don't think that question resonates today, you haven't been paying attention.--David Barbour