The Threepenny Opera

Scott Elliott’s production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at Studio 54 makes knife-blade sharp the strong connection between the determinedly presentational style that the librettist-lyricist developed and the distinctive form of Weimar Republic kabarett. Indeed, Threepenny as seen here might be considered a performance art/cabaret combo, since the musical’s songs are presented as if in a nightclub setting despite the presence of some set pieces and blaring neon signs provided by Derek McLane. (Jason Lyons is the show’s lighting designer).

Possibly, this revelation struck me because I was already beginning to think that Threepenny may now work best as a song cycle. As a play with music, it certainly doesn’t hum along like a new BMW in this presentation — and I’m going to attribute the problem to both the late book writer and the very much alive and busy director. True, Elliott gets thing off to a fab start: Most of the 20 actors enter through the auditorium and take the stage, where they shed their outerwear to display an array of costumer Isaac Mizrahi’s skimpy innerwear. After putting finishing touches on each other’s make-up, they assume accusatory expressions and face the audience in solid ranks. Immediately, Cyndi Lauper begins singing “Mack the Knife.” The others then deliver solos until all of them are lined up downstage. Aha, I thought; this is how Brecht would have liked it!

From there on, however, the sizzle fizzles. Book scene after book scene fails to be mordantly amusing, and the unsparing Brecht-Weill proclamation that there’s no honor among thieves feels clumsy in the telling. Little momentum is attained as the villainous Macheath (Alan Cumming) is betrayed by the prostitute Jenny Diver (Lauper) and then overthrown by Jonathan and Celia Peachum (Jim Dale and Ana Gasteyer) because he has audaciously married their not-so-virginal daughter Polly (Nellie McKay).

Actually, there may be another culprit here in Wallace Shawn, who has provided a new translation for this production (and is also heard a few times in voiceover). Clearly, what Elliott wanted was a 2006 version of Threepenny that would be equivalent in shock value to Brecht’s 1928 script. Shawn keeps the obscenities popping like kernels of corn in a microwave oven, but in these permissive times, they are far from shocking. The dialogue and lyrics, although conscientious, are prosaic — but not in the deliberately unpolished manner in which Brecht wrote his didactic, stirring anthems about man’s inhumanity to man.

While The Threepenny Opera as a whole doesn’t resound at Studio 54, many of the cast members make favorable impressions when the figurative cabaret spotlight hits them. Keep in mind that this is one of the most bizarrely cast ensembles in some time, and that Elliot and casting director Jim Carnahan chose the performers more for their singing ability than for their acting. Still, Lauper wins the “Why Haven’t You Been on Broadway Before?” award. With her trademark concert delivery intact, she nails the opening threnody and later does a wounded “Solomon Song” that even Lotte Lenya would have applauded.

Dale, a sly stage fox, plays Peachum in a big suit and a hairdo that looks like a wave about to crash on a shore. He’s sometimes rubbery, sometimes mechanical, but always right on the mark in his “Song of Inadequacy of Human Striving.” He also delights as one-third of the trio (with Gasteyer and McKay) that conjures a showstopper from “Certain Things Make Life Impossible.” Gasteyer later shakes the walls with “The Ballad of the Overwhelming Power of Sex.” As for McKay, the poor thing has no idea how to play Polly, since Brechtian detachment is a concept that she clearly hasn’t yet integrated; still, the initial fragility building to defiance that she brings to “Pirate Jenny” is a step in the oh-so-right direction.

If anyone comes close to stealing the show, it’s Brian Charles Rooney, who turns up in drag and sings a pure-falsetto “Lucy’s Aria” in German and English. Bravo to him — even though his subsequent full-frontal demo, presumably at Elliot’s behest, is unnecessary. And Cumming? Well, it’s fun to hear him give Macheath the full Scottish treatment. Typically, the actor holds nothing back, but it’s somewhat mitigating to watch him play this character on the same stage where he played the insinuating emcee in Cabaret. He looked emaciated back then and now is buffed up, but that’s the only big difference. Cumming is once again playing menace — more overtly threatening this time, but still rather too familiar an affect.

Though Cumming’s performance has its highlights, as do so many of the others, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the production. On a positive note, there are now several potentially hot-cha supper club performances that I’m extremely eager to see!