The Threepenny Opera

First things first, I'm going to feel especially bad about this review because The Threepenny Opera happens to be the final show for Stephanie Shine as artistic director. It came as quite a shock to me that she was leaving, and I'll be sad to see her go considering she essentially started my acting career. Which is why this review is going to be a little painful.

The only exposure I had had to Threepenny was from a video of Alan Cummings and Cyndi Lauper at the Tony Awards singing The Ballad of the Pimp, and it was awesome. A passionate yet deeply troubled love story. Still, I knew that that one little sample wasn't enough to really know what to expect, so I came into Seattle Shakes' production with a fairly blank slate.

After the first of three acts, I tried to convince myself that it was such a bad show because the script itself was poorly written. There seemed to be almost no continuity between what they were saying and the songs that seemed to suddenly sprout from nowhere. Why are we in the middle of this ramshackle wedding and suddenly the bride launches into this looong solemn song about a black freighter that has absolutely no relevance to what was happening? I had also become extremely disappointed in one of my favorite Seattle actors, John Bogar, for presenting a Mack the Knife that seemed entirely one dimensional. And that one dimension, as my girlfriend and I said to each other at the same time, was "smarm". We start off the play with this number about Mack the Knife and how he smiles like a shark and keeps his blade hidden, and have a beautiful moment where the song stops and he casually walks through the crowd whistling, conveying that perfect sense of tension. And then the rest of the show we get a Mack who no one seems to be all that afraid of and who himself conveys more this sense of trying to look dangerous without really being so. The whole first act left me feeling confused, disappointed, and wondering why the hell anyone would think the script was worth putting on.

Then the end of the second act came and I understood. Yes, there were several problems with the translation that Seattle Shakes decided to use, but no excuse could be made for...I am sorry Stephanie...the absolutely terrible direction given to those actors. I was shocked and dismayed to see elementary blocking and elementary blocking mistakes everywhere. I swear I've never seen so much upstaging, and even self-upstaging, in a single production before. I couldn't comprehend how a director could watch these completely different characters and archetypes try to interact on stage and fail to mesh in a substantial way and not step in and try to, you know, direct them. Say things like, "Police Chief, tone it down a notch," or make the actors ask questions like "Mack, do you really love him, or are you trying to manipulate him into letting you free, and if so, why should he believe you?" It came down to the face that no one was making any interesting choices with their characters. The only two to stand out in that regard were Jenny, a prostitute and Mack's former lover, and Lucy, the chief's daughter and one of Mack's wives. They at least tried to convey their own important story and took their characters seriously. The rest of them performed like they were in a farce, and by the end of the third act I knew why.

Because Stephanie Shine had no idea what to do with a musical. It was the first ever musical for Seattle Shakespeare, and it showed. There were certainly some wonderful dramatic moments that if it had been a normal play, would've shone brightly. But when they're surrounded by the mess they were put in, they simply become glimpses of what this show could have been. It was especially interesting seeing this show after listening to William Shatner at Comicon explain the difference between comedy and drama, and how there's really very little difference. In comedy you need to take yourself just as seriously as if you're in a drama. And that, that is what this show was missing. It tried to be a comedy. It tried to be funny. And it's not. Yes, there are some funny moments, but it seemed to me that most of the humor of this show should've been found in the more dramatic moments.

And speaking of dramatic moments...oh my god the ending. So, the pre-show sets up and it presents to us this very cabaret-like setting where the actors start getting up one by one and singing some songs in German. However, every so often there are these sirens or loud noises and the actors stop whatever they're doing to look offstage. Then, this happens throughout the show. Fair enough. I get it. You're building to some kind of meta ending. Fine. Then the surprise ending of the actual play where SPOILER IF YOU CARE Mack ends up being saved from hanging by a deus ex machina messenger who tells him the queen has pardoned him and made him a baron. END SPOILER Then of course they talk about how things don't always end this way and how it could be a lot worse, and sure enough, the noise offstage rears its head and I'm just like "Okay, here come the Nazis to fulfill the promise that not all endings are happy." And then...nothing. No reveal. They seemed to cut the final song a little short or something and then walked off into the shadows. A "dramatic moment" with no relevance or meaning. And personally, I think it fit the theme of this production wonderfully. It presents itself like a farce, has some staged dramatic moments that are emotionally effective due to standard theater conditioning but carry no weight to them, and build things up only to let them fizzle out. And much like the very end, this production will likely fade into the shadows where it belongs.

I'm sorry to be so harsh to this show, but just about everything from the staging to the acting to the directing to the bad translation to the "choreography" if you can call it that, all fell completely flat.

Thankfully, coming from learning about viewpoints from Chekhov In Love I can tell you that a large part of the reason it sucked were because the actors were constantly in a dead zone of spatial relations, the entire show and everyone's movements were at the exact same tempo, and any repetition was forced and wholly unconvincing (especially this weird lunging posture both Mack and Jenny adopted during the Ballad of the Pimp). Basically, there was no dynamism. There was no pop, no pow. Nothing to give this play any energy to work with.

I've also just happened to be watching a bootleg capture of Alan Cummings and Cyndi Lauper's Threepenny on youtube, and while I have problems with that one too (Cummings' Mack is almost too angry/dangerous, needs a bit more of that smarm mixed in) it at the very least treats itself like what it is, a penny dreadful, and has some wonderful dynamics. It's also fascinating to watch how completely different several of the characters are between productions. Probably the most striking so far has been that Seattle Shakes' Mrs. Peachum was crotchety, a sloppy drunk, and more resembles the Thenardiers of Les Mis. On Broadway, however, Mrs. Peachum is an uptight businesswoman, proper but easily vexed. It's uncanny.

Anyways, the overall point is that it seems to me Threepenny is already a tough musical to work with, and it by no means should've been Seattle Shakes' first. And even then they should've hired an actual musical choreographer and director to take over this one. Now, I do have to say, most of the rest of the audience actually seemed to really love it. I don't understand why. Maybe it's just that I come from a theater background and so I recognize bad direction, lazy acting, and upstaging up the wazoo, but what I watched was a mess of theater that could and should have been much better.

The Threepenny Opera gets a 4/10.