THE THREEPENNY OPERA Opens At International City Theater

Filled with colorful criminals, biting social satire and a brilliant score, The Threepenny Opera opens International City Theatre's 2009 Season at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Jules Aaron directs Michael Feingold's translation of the trailblazing musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill that became one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century. Darryl Archibald is musical director and Kay Cole choreographs the five-week run February 20 through March 22; low-priced previews begin February 17.

First performed in 1928, Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera was a revolutionary musical theater masterpiece that mocked the bourgeois political movement of pre-Hitler Germany. Brecht's brittle, sardonic tale of beggars, thieves and prostitutes, adapted from the 1728 play The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, was a fierce social and political critique, and Weill's innovative score that fused American jazz with German cabaret captured the ironic tone of the lyrics. Part acid social criticism, part bittersweet romance, the now eighty-year old saga of "Mack the Knife" and his entourage of criminals and whores has never lost its theatrical punch.

"It's a satire on capitalism and corruption told from the viewpoint of the 'little people'," notes Aaron. "If there was ever time to revive this show, it's now. Michael [Feingold]'s translation is earthy, gritty and very funny. I think it's going to strike a chord with audiences."

The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) caused a sensation in Berlin when it opened. Audiences couldn't get enough, and it launched Brecht and Weill to immediate success. The show saw an amazing 130 productions on the Continent over the next four years. The Off Broadway New York revival in 1954 ran for a record 2611 consecutive performances; it has been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times including Broadway productions in 1989 and 2006.

Macheath, a notorious thief, pimp and murderer more commonly known as Mack the Knife among his criminal cohorts, marries Polly, the daughter of Jonathan Peachum, in a dubiously legal wedding ceremony. Peachum and his wife set out to destroy their nefarious son-in-law, but Mack is good friends and financial partners with Tiger Brown, the Chief of Police, who is protecting him. Yet, when Peachum, who outfits and controls all the panhandlers in town, threatens to ruin Queen Victoria's Coronation by having his army of beggars line the streets during the ceremony, Brown has no choice but to imprison Mack, where he is certain to meet a bloody end.

The ICT production stars Jeff Griggs as Macheath (Oscar Jaffe in ICT's Twentieth Century, Jack in the award-winning Reefer Madness, the villainous Jude St. Clair on Days of Our Lives) and Shannon Warne as Polly Peachum (Estella in the new musical version of Dickens' Great Expectations, Hippolytos at Getty Villa, Bark at the Coast Playhouse). Mr. and Mrs Peachum are played by Tom Shelton (Twentieth Century and Loot at ICT) and Eileen T'Kaye (Fraulein Schneider in ICT's Cabaret, Don't Talk to the Actors at Laguna Playhouse, the world premiere musical Gulls at The Theatre @ Boston Court). Paul Zegler is Tiger Brown (Herr Schultz in ICT's Cabaret, roles at the Long Wharf Theater, Goodman Theater, Mark Taper Forum, member of Chicago's Second City alongside Bill Murray and Betty Thomas); Rachel Genevieve is Lucy Brown (Bye Bye Birdie and the world premiere of Twice Upon a Time with Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities, Dance With Me for the Festival of New American Musicals); and Zarah Mahler is Jenny Diver (Havok Theatre's critically acclaimed musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, Great Expectations: the Musical at the Hudson Theatre/Odyssey Theatre and Florida Rep, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Glendale Theatre). Also in the cast are Ceasar F. Barajas, Julie Carrillo, Gabriel Corbin, Daniel Vincent Gordh, Brian Crawford Scott, Jake Wesley Stewart and Michael Uribes.

Playwright, poet and lyricist Bertolt Brecht was among the most controversial figures ever to impact musical theater. An avowed Marxist, he often worked in tandem with composer Kurt Weill to create one of the most provocative bodies of work ever staged. Brecht was born February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria. His early Expressionist dramas - Trommeln in der Nacht (Drums in the Night), Baal and Im Dickicht der Stadte (In the Jungle of Cities) - reflected his anti-establishment leanings. In 1928 Brecht earned his greatest theatrical success with Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera); like the previous year's Mann ist Mann (Man Equals Man) and 1929's Mahagonny, it spotlighted the playwright's gift for incisive satire of bourgeois sensibilities. By 1933, Brecht, exiled to Denmark in the wake of the Reichstag fire, had acquired an international reputation. An outspoken critic of the Nazis, his plays, poems and radio dramas of the period attacked the Hitler regime with thinly-veiled contempt. Finally, in 1941 he was forced to flee to Hollywood to escape the Nazis' wrath, settling there to write works including Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis (The Caucasian Chalk Circle), Mutter Courage (Mother Courage) and Leben des Galilei (Life of Galileo). In 1947 Brecht was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his pro-Communist beliefs. He then moved to East Berlin, where he established his own theater, the Berliner Ensemble. He died on August 14, 1956.

Born the son of a cantor in Dessau, Germany in 1900, Kurt Weill had established himself as one of the leading composers of his generation, along with Paul Hindemith and Ernst Krenek, by 1925. A commission from the Baden-Baden Music Festival in 1927 led to the creation of Mahagonny (Ein Songspiel), Weill's first collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, whose Mann ist Mann and whose poetry collection, Die Hauspostille, had captured Weill's imagination and suggested a compatible literary and dramatic sensibility. Exploiting their aggressive popular song-style, Weill and Brecht also wrote several works for singing actors in the commercial theater, including Die Dreigroschenoper and Happy End. They explored other alternatives to the opera establishment in the school-opera Der Jasager and the radio cantatas Das Berliner Requiem and Der Lindberghflug. Increasingly uncomfortable with Brecht's restriction of the role of music in his political theater, Weill then turned to another collaborator, the famous stage designer Caspar Neher, for the libretto of his three-act epic opera, Die Burgschaft (1931), and again to Georg Kaiser for the daring play-with-music Der Silbersee (1932). These later works outraged the Nazis. Riots broke out at several performances and carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns discouraged productions of his works. In March 1933, Weill fled Germany with his wife, Lotte Lenya. Weill's American musicals were Johnny Johnson (1936), Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Lady in the Dark (1941), One Touch of Venus (1943), The Firebrand of Florence (1945), Street Scene (1947), Love Life (1948), and Lost in the Stars (1949). At the time of his death he was working with Maxwell Anderson on Raft on the River, a musical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. A 1954 revival of The Threepenny Opera became one of the most successful of all Off Broadway offerings and revived interest in his work, especially after "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" became widely popular.

The set designer for The Threepenny Opera is John Iacovelli; lighting designer is Jared Sayeg; costume designer is Shon LeBlanc; sound design is by Paul Fabre; property designers are Patty and Gordon Briles; casting is by Michael Donovan Casting; and Shashin Desai produces for International City Theatre.

International City Theatre is the Resident Professional Theater at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, and the recipient of the Margaret Harford Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle for "Sustained Excellence in Theater."

The Threepenny Opera runs Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm, February 20 through March 22. Tickets are $35.00 and $40.00 on Thursdays, and $40.00 and $45.00 on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, except opening night which is $50.00 and $60.00 and includes a reception with the actors following the performance. Preview performances take place on Tuesday, February 17; Wednesday, February 18; and Thursday, February 19 at 8 pm. Preview tickets are $32.00. International City Theatre is located in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center at 300 E. Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach. For reservations and information, call the ICT Box Office at (562) 436-4610 or go to www.ictlongbeach.org.

 

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