Word: macheath
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...Lowell House Dining Hall.Set in mid-eighteenth century Soho, London, the opera nonetheless captures the moral ambiguity and social insecurity of Weimar Republic-era Germany, the time period in which it was written. The story follows the extremely likable anti-hero Macheath (Brian Ballard), known as Mack the Knife, as he robs, cheats and womanizes his way into our hearts. His life intersects those of the miserly Mr. and Mrs. Peachum (Nathan Troup and Tracy Reynolds) the resentful prostitute Jenny Diver (Karoun A. Demirjian ’03), and the corrupt cop Tiger Brown (Nicholas N. Commins...
...Blue Eyes had cut to that time; won Darin a Grammy too. With a simple, one-key modulation after every verse, and solid underscoring of reeds and horns by arranger Richard Wess, Darin evinced a subtler understanding of lyrics: he gets nicely slurry on the line "And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor," as if imitating a drunken sailor. And his attack has more power. He sings like a grownup...
...Cagney & Lacey in a revival drawn from the memoirs of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Prince of Central Park, which quickly closed, derived from a book that had also prompted a made-for-TV movie. Brecht's own The Threepenny Opera, featuring rock star Sting as the seductive villain Macheath, is freely filched from British satirist John Gay's 1728 The Beggar's Opera. Sad to say, although each show could boast ingenious design and staging or beguiling acting, far from the best writers have been at work...
...there are other, less conventional strengths, each illuminating enough of the production to carry it past awkward moments. Lars Gunnar-Wigemark, snarling and slobbering as he narrates, inspires awe and terror even when he enters unexpectedly carrying a bright pink can of Tab; and Martha Hackett as Jenny, Macheath's favorite whore, provides the evening's most gripping moments in her two songs. --Amy E. Schwartz...
...literal. This idea, inherent to the epic, becomes curiously reversed in Brooks' design. The sets strive for realistic representation, as in Newgate prison. Props, on the other hand, crowd the production, devoid of social significance. What, for example, is the purpose of the toilet so prominently displayed in Macheath's cell, but to elicit a weak laugh when he sits on it, saying, "One must live well to know what living is." Why must a bed, clearly relevent to Macheath's character, be lowered majestically, with all the sensational aspect of a Deus ex machina, rather than be wheeled...