Theater review
Perhaps the epitome of highbrow-meets-lowbrow theater, “The Threepenny Opera” wraps urgent social satire and playfully experimental narrative construction inside a grimy wrapper. Sordid and soaring, it’s a tale about thieves, rapists and rapacious capitalists, with an antihero jockeying with his antagonists for the title of most loathsome character. It also produced one of the most enduring jazz standards of the 20th century.
Content and form are perfectly matched in Theatre Battery’s production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s opera, which takes place in a former Christopher & Banks clothing store at the Kent Station mall. Theatre Battery, known for its “radical hospitality” practice in which all tickets are free of charge, stages its shows in whatever vacant storefront is available at Kent Station.
Here, the remnants of a retail operation are fully visible, from standees that may have once advertised a sale on blouses to a cash wrap counter now outfitted with a noose. If any play is suited to squatting, it’s “The Threepenny Opera,” and Brecht, whose name is synonymous with theatrical alienation, would approve of this vigorously un-immersive experience.
That’s not to imply Theatre Battery’s production feels like homework. Directed by producing artistic director Logan Ellis, this is an enormously entertaining staging, stacked with vibrant performances. The translation and adaptation by Ellis and Theatre Battery judiciously modernizes the book and lyrics, and is backed by a five-piece jazz band playing intricate and lively new compositions.
As Macheath, a notorious London serial killer and rapist also referred to as “Mack the Knife,” Devin White leers and charms in equal measure, and makes the mere act of putting on a glove a discomfiting, suggestive action. “Mack the Knife” became a hit for jazz singers from Ella Fitzgerald to Bobby Darin, but the version here doesn’t euphemize Mack’s horrors — or his irresistibility.
“Yes I hear you, he’s a rapist and a serial killer, I can see,” sings Polly Peachum (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino). “But it’s sexy, why do I like that? Mack the Knife, please marry me.”
Mack and Polly’s marriage sets off a firestorm, with her parents Mr. Peachum (Robert McPherson) and Mrs. Peachum (Olivia Lee) determined to see Mack hanged. Concern for their daughter’s welfare is secondary to financial considerations. After all, the Peachums make their living exploiting the London beggar community, while Mack, with his network of thieves, at least offers the potential of upward mobility.
Mack is protected by the chief of police Tiger Brown (Richard Arum), his best friend from their military days (and in this staging, much more than a platonic buddy), but Mack’s recklessness threatens to catch up with him. When he really should flee the city, he opts instead to visit his favorite brothel. Is that the decision that will cause him to swing from the gallows? In “The Threepenny Opera,” nothing is off the table.
It becomes apparent that Theatre Battery’s production is something special, when Paulino (a fan favorite on HBO Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls”) launches into haunting murder ballad “Pirate Jenny.” Paulino’s alternately bright and bellowing vocals are transfixing, and the way her performance wrests the attention away from Mack introduces a compelling recurring tension: women trying to assert themselves in a restrictive society led by monstrous men.
That includes Jenny (Adrienne Wells), Mack’s preferred sex worker, and Lucy (Theron Lutes), the police chief’s daughter who has her own connection to Mack. For these women, their options for self-actualization are limited. But they take them where they can get them.
Theatre Battery’s staging is suffused both with small moments of ramshackle razzle-dazzle — ensemble MVP is Marnie Wingett, who tap dances, belts and nails a half-dozen winking laugh lines — and truly dazzling musical heights. Obviously, a retail space does not offer the ideal acoustics for operatic singing, but when McPherson, Lee and Paulino harmonize in “The First Threepenny Finale,” it hardly seems to matter.
Nearly 15 years on, Theatre Battery’s mission of bringing accessible theater to an underserved area continues to be admirable. But its bold programming and high-quality productions make it more than a nice story; this is one of our region’s theatrical gems.
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