The Threepenny Opera
Playwright: Bertolt Brecht Composer: Kurt Weill In a new adaptation by Simon Stephens Director: Rufus Norris Olivier, National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000) Until 1 October Running time: 3hrs (including interval) Rufus Norris has had a choppy start as boss of the National Theatre, said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph. He needs a “copper-bottomed hit” to silence the doubters. Alas, I doubt The Threepenny Opera is it. Admittedly, this “bleak” reimagining of the Brecht/weill classic about East End lowlifes (itself a satirical update of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, from 1728) is at times “very good indeed”. The evening “soars” during the musical numbers, performed by an onstage band dressed like “ghoulish apparitions from a Weimar cabaret”. And there are some cracking performances: Sharon Small is wonderful as opium-addicted “ruined soul” Jenny, and Nick Holder is fabulous as the “dandy villain” Peachum, out for revenge on the murderous Macheath – Mack the Knife – for seducing his daughter. Yet overall the show is curiously low in “anger and energy”, with the lead, Rory Kinnear, lacking the “effortless malign magnetism” needed for Macheath.
I thought the production was “weird”, said Ann Treneman in The Times. Norris has ramped up the foul language and – for no apparent reason other than to confuse us – has turned Macheath into a voracious bisexual. But the soul of the piece is lacking. “Where are the politics? Where is the heart?” By “downplaying the story’s grit and embracing a cartoonish exuberance”, Norris must have known his production would divide opinion, said Henry Hitchings in the London Evening Standard. Mine is that after a tentative opening, it “fizzes with ideas, doing justice to Kurt Weill’s score, a blend of cabaret and jazz that sounds timelessly, enticingly sleazy”. And in my view Kinnear is excellent as Macheath, bringing a “chilling charisma” and “murderous, businesslike cynicism” to the part.
But he’s not a patch on the “high-voltage” women, said Stephen Dalton in The Hollywood Reporter. Haydn Gwynne is “imperious” as Peachum’s “boozy, floozy wife”; Rosalie Craig is brilliantly “wily” as Macheath’s wife, Polly Peachum; and Debbie Kurup is compelling as her “bootyshaking” love rival, Lucy Brown.