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Threepenny drops for a lively show
Canadian director Robert Lepage is used to a certain amount of controversy but even he wasn’t prepared for the shock of his production of The Threepenny Opera being close by the copyright holders because it was deemed not to be faithful to the original.
Undeterred, Lepage did exactly what Brecht and Weill had done and went back to the source, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. The result is The Busker’s Opera, which borrows its characters and script from Gay but gives the lot a contemporary spin with modern music and issues.
The Busker’s Opera was first seen in Montreal in February and had a short run in Paris in June. Even now, with its third outing in Melbourne, Lepage
admits the show is still developping. Some scenes want more focus while others are little long. But these are minor problems in a show that is bursting with ideas, imagination and energy.
While the narrative is cut to the bone, The Busker’s Opera reveals in its individual scenes and riot of musical styles. There’s the busker in the London Tube station who could play the sticks off an orchestral percussionnist; a hilarious scene of Polly Peachum and Macheath rolling around on a bear skin rug; a vignette of the Rat Pack at play in Vegas.
The extraordinary breadth of Lepage’s imagination becomes clear in the scene where Polly and Lucy are bitching about which of them is really Macheath’s wife. The two women sing verses of abuse at each other, then break into Arabic and Hebrew and finally folk-dance at each other. It’s a great catfight but also a none-too subtle comment on the level debate in the Middle East.
All 10 cast members sing and play, though the singing is deliberately crass: more music hall than opera theatre. The music range wildly from ska to zydeco to country to Broadway.
Lepage’s vision is ultimately bleaker than the roistering fatalism of The Beggar’s Opera. The show finishes with a sort of anti-finale, with the hopeful young musician Macheath executed by the lethal injection, alone and unwanted.
Such is Lepage’s comment on the voracious music industry. Australian idols, take heed.
