Mack the Knife back in Threepenny theatre
NT Live productions don’t usually carry an age restriction, but their next offering, The Threepenny
Opera, is decidedly not for kids thanks to some “filthy language and immoral behaviour”.
A new adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill musical by Simon Stephens, the production was filmed at the National’s Olivier Theatre.
Although the musical was first performed in the late 1920s, some of its songs have been covered and parodied by everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Psychedelic Furs. One of its most famous songs is The Ballad of Mack the Knife, a song often referenced in TV series and films, and covered by many as a jazz standard, and this is the production that gave Nina Simone the Pirate
Jenny song. Set in London, the play focuses on anti-hero criminal Macheath, who marries Polly Peachum, to the displeasure of her father, who controls the city’s beggars.
In this production, cabaret star, Le Gateau Chocolate (George Ikediashi), welcomes the audiences to “our dirty ditch of a theatre”, before launching into his rendition of Mack the Knife.
Directed by Rufus Norris, director of the National Theatre, the darkly comic take on the raucous musical stars Rory Kinnear (Hamlet, Othello) as Macheath, alongside Rosalie Craig (As You Like It) as Polly Peachum and Haydn Gwynne (The Windsors) as Mrs Peachum and Nick Holder is Mr Peachum.
The film screens at SterKinekor Nouveau Theatres on Saturday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7.30pm and Sunday at 2.30pm. It runs at 180 minutes, with a 20-minute interval. – Film Writer
● The next production from NT Live will be No Man’s Land, which begins in January. It stars Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart, who both return to the West End for Harold Pinter’s comic classic.