The Threepenny Opera

Apr 1, '12 9:25 PM for everyone

Category:	Music
Genre:	Opera & Vocal
Artist:	LAMDA

A lively, bawdy and really just as it was intended performance of the Kurt Weill (music) and Bertolt Brecht (words) satirical comic musical play - The Theree Penny Opera was staged at a small provincial theatre in Ludlow earlier this year. One which I attended and happily took the liberty of acquiring a few hand held images of the show whilst I was there......


For me one of the (many) highlights of the performance by final year students at the London Academy of Music and Performing Arts was Hatty Preston as Mrs Peachum singing an old favourite of mine....The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit).



This musical first performed in Berlin in 1928 was translated into English and adapted by the American composer Marc Blitzstein.

The plot set in Victorian London in a nutshell according to our old friend Wikipedia is as follows:-

Macheath (Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife) marries Polly Peachum. This displeases her father, who controls the beggars of London, and he endeavours to have Macheath hanged. His attempts are hindered by the fact that the Chief of Police, Tiger Brown, is Macheath's old army comrade. Still, Peachum exerts his influence and eventually gets Macheath arrested and sentenced to hang. Macheath escapes this fate via a deus ex machina moments before the execution when, in an unrestrained parody of a happy ending, a messenger from the Queen arrives to pardon Macheath and grant him the title of Baron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera#Overview


The LAMDA production was animated and full of life. The play is about the underclass and in it Brecht asks the question:-

"Who is the greater criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?"

I think today in contemporary Britain many of us know the answer to that question as did many at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin at the Threepenny Opera's first performance in 1928, but then like now they were about to be caught up in another global conflagration initiated by fascists, but paid for by Wall Street. So this was a particularly apposite entertainment at the Victorian Assembly Rooms in this small market town near the Welsh borders of historical Mercia.

This production was set in the current run-up to the Olympics but given the original historical setting of Queen Victoria's coronation parade, I thought it was interesting that in this Royal Jubilee year they chose to refer to the Olympics. Perhaps this was so as not to encourage all the beggers who were sitting in the best seats at the theatre, the idea that they should swarm on the streets and riot during the Jubilee could create a hostage to fortune?

Very socially responsible of LAMDA (who are marking their 150th anniversary this year) I must say. Also a very enjoyable performance nevertheless.

http://www.lamda.org.uk/development/index.htm