Back To The Future of Poverty
‘Threepenny Opera’ and ‘Rent’ at the begining of a new American century
By Don Shirley
As the struggling underclass quickly expands, the time is right to revisit two quasi-operatic musicals, The Threepenny Opera and Rent. They depict earlier manifestations of that struggle, often by the light of enormous overhanging moons.
Jules Aaron’s staging of Threepenny for International City Theatre is the best rendition of this Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht classic that I’ve seen in the Southland. Aaron never forgets the show’s goal of satirizing capitalism by demonstrating how its precepts are adopted by thieves, murderers and whores.
He chose Michael Feingold’s scabrous translation instead of Marc Blitzstein’s gentler, more familiar version. And he places the musical numbers front and center because these astringent songs are intended to explode directly in the audience’s collective face.
Aaron hired actors with big voices and supremely authoritative deliveries, supervised by musical director Darryl Archibald. Jeff Griggs, who is best known as a TV soap opera villain, is a dynamo as the charismatic criminal boss Macheath, alternately charming and creepy. As his bride Polly Peachum, Shannon Warne segues smoothly from naïvete to the self-confidence necessary to strip down to her underwear in order to sing “Pirate Jenny” at her own wedding and, eventually, to assume control of her husband’s gang.
Tom Shelton and Eileen T’Kaye are commandingly snappy as Polly’s parents. Zarah Mahler sizzles as Jenny Diver, Macheath’s prostitute lover who turns him in – her low-lit reprise of “Mack the Knife” is indelible. Rachel Genevieve is her wily match as Lucy Brown, whose father – the ever-corrupt chief of police – is embodied by the appropriately squishy-looking Paul Zegler.
Add an occasionally gender-flipping chorus, and we’ve got a wonderfully entertaining rogues’ gallery, moving with assurance through Kay Cole’s brisk choreography, under the shadow of an overhanging gallows. That we can enjoy such unapologetic scoundrels (who were first introduced in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728) speaks well of the actors – or perhaps badly of us.
The characters in Jonathan Larson’s Rent are different, supposedly a lot more like you and me at the most bohemian stage of our lives. In fact, they’re based on those in Puccini’s La Bohème, which premiered almost exactly a century before Rent opened in 1996.
The Renters don’t know how they can possibly pay last year’s rent, as they protest on behalf of the more seriously homeless (who are not all that grateful for their assistance). Yet at least a few of these Alphabet City dwellers made a conscious decision to reject the choices and presumably the resources of their affluent parents in order to work on their art. Whether this makes them more or less sympathetic than the Threepenny miscreants is open to debate, but Larson’s score heavily loads the deck in their favor, just as Puccini did a century earlier. Some of them, of course, have additional problems that go beyond poverty, such as AIDS.
Rent still has narrative problems that might have been fixed if Larson hadn’t died immediately before the first preview. But after seeing four versions of this show, I’ve stopped nitpicking the narrative, because I’m swept away by the characters and their full-throttle way of expressing their emotions in song.
The actors who created the roles of narrator/videographer Mark (Anthony Rapp) and HIV-infected rock composer Roger (Adam Pascal) are performing Rent for the first time in L.A., quickly banishing any suspicions that they might be too old, 13 years later. Lexi Lawson is a sensational Mimi, who is more or less the Jenny Diver of Rent, and Justin Johnston is scintillating as the cross-dressing Angel, who’s in love with Michael McElroy’s Tom Collins.
Although Larson was no Brecht, he offers his own critique of capitalism, most sharply in this lyric: “When you’re living in America at the end of the millennium, you’re what you own. So I own not a notion. I escape and ape content. I don’t own emotion – I rent.” At the beginning of the next millennium, as millions of Americans veer farther from “the ownership society,” Rent rings true.
The Threepenny Opera, International City Theatre, Center Theater, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, (562) 436-4610. ictlongbeach.org. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. $30-$45. Closes March 22.
Rent, Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 365-3500. ticketmaster.com. Tue.-Fri, 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m. $25-$75. Closes March 8.
Published: 03/04/2009
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