Taking on The Threepenny Opera can be a precarious business, as OVO demonstrate, without flinching from the challenge. They promise ‘a riotous and a rough reimagining of Bertolt Brecht's zany musical’. They don't stop there with the assurances but go on to say that in his ‘spirit of experimentation this ambitious modern update of theatre's first musical defies theatrical convention whilst aiming to shock, engage, mock and even disturb its audience’. It begs the question as to whether the production lives up to the hype.
Somewhere beneath the medium with all its shenanigans is Brecht’s message
The claim to its being ’theatre's first musical’ is at the very least questionable. Brecht himself referred to it as ‘a play with music’ and it would take more than this rendition to shock an audience nowadays. A couple of things stand out from the start. With instrumentalists spread around the front rows, Musical Director Lada Valesova has her work cut out just establishing where they are, who’s playing in a particular number and which way to face. However, she looks the part in black tails; though it might be more as a circus ringmaster than conductor. But it all comes together and justice is done to Weil’s punchy music.
With audience on four sides of the performance square, the cast of over twenty actor/musicians are well directed in using the space by Adam Nichols with Julia Mintzer and weaving their way in and out of the central scaffolding frame. That structure suggests a construction site, underscored by a cast mostly in hard hats with bright orange and yellow hi-vis jackets. Bottom halves of shop mannequins are frequently hung up and moved around. When when combined with the abattoir scene they suggest the fate that might await those who cross the path of Macheath (Peter Watts); that nasty piece of work around whom the action revolves. Others, hanging by a noose, indicating what awaits even a petty criminal. Then there are the people in white coats, with the appearance of lab workers, who keep the proceedings in order as they announce the fleeting scenes over the tannoy.
The overall effect is to make the production more ridiculous than absurd. The harsh London setting in which the original was envisioned and to which the text so pertinently relates is lost in the mish-mash of abstract locations amongst the poles. Modern references to the police, political figures and royalty hardly count as an update and counteracts the timelessness of the message. Performances are energetic but songs and text tend to be belted out rather then letting the subtleties of the music and the nuances of the script do their work.
Somewhere beneath the medium with all its shenanigans is Brecht’s message: A socialist critique of the capitalist world; far simpler and much purer.
