Ah, but Threepenny — with book and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill — predates them all. And it’s darker. And stranger.
Written in the 1920s, at the height of the ambitious Weimar cabaret movement in Germany, it’s all about dishonor among thieves, beggars, women of questionable virtue and corrupt authority figures.
The story’s central characters are the rapscallion Macheath, the love of his life Polly Peacham, her crooked parents Jonathan Jeremiah and Celia, police chief Tiger Brown and his daughter Lucy. And a whore named Jenny.
There are no heroes.
“It’s a super-important piece of musical theater,” director David M. Jenkins says. “And as somebody who doesn’t consider himself the biggest fan of musical theater — I think there are way more bad musicals than good ones — I am a huge fan of Brecht.”
Brecht’s play is itself an adaptation of The Beggar’s Opera, a popular 18th-century work by British playwright John Gay. But Brecht, with his sharp sense of irony, sarcasm and socio-political charades, made his barbed libretto pointedly about capitalism, class and the fine line separating “good” and “bad.”
“This is an incredibly topical piece,” suggests Jenkins. “I think it’s completely politically and socially relevant. And it was written in the ‘20s!
“There’s a line that’s been sticking with me lately: J.J. Peachum is talking about the government, and he says ‘You people can make poor people. You just can’t bear to look at them.’ Or when Macheath says ‘I’m thinking about going into banking — the risk is less, and the rewards are way better.’
“The ethical world of this play is really messed up. None of these people are very good.”
Weill’s score includes several songs that have become standards (“Mack the Knife,” “Pirate Jenny,” “Jealousy Duet,” “Cannon Song”). But unlike modern musicals, no one bursts into song to “explain their inner feelings” or move the plot along. All the songs are directed to the audience.
“Brecht uses music to comment on the action,” says Jenkins. “So it’s like a step removed, as if the characters step outside of themselves to comment on what’s going on and what they’re going through. It’s a harsher juxtaposition between scene and song.”
Amy E. Gray, who was last seen in Jobsite’s Cloud Nine, appears as Jenny.
“When I do ‘Solomon’s Song’ at the end,” she explains, “it’s completely my statement about what we are all doing to each other.”
Like Jenkins, Gray recognizes a throughline running from the 1920s to contemporary times.
“This story helps you to escape the darkness of today with another kind of darkness you can laugh at, without feeling bad about yourself,” she says. “Like right now, the things that are happening in our world — you gotta laugh or you’re gonna cry. But it’s real.
“Here, it’s all fantasy — even though it has really great commentary, you can sit back and relax and watch these people be just horrible, but trying to find some sort of dignity through it all.”
According to Jenkins, the notion of “alienating the audience” is a cornerstone of Brechtian theater. “He creates these characters that you want to like, that you want to root for, who are not good people. And it makes you look at yourself and go ‘This is weird. Here am I, are there are all these whores and thieves and shysters, but at the same time I’m kind of interested in them.’
“And it’s entertaining. These characters are fun and interesting, no matter what their role is or where they fit into the bigger puzzle.”
Jenkins, his cast of 16 and a 9-member (mostly) onstage band are staging The Threepenny Opera in the Straz Center’s 320-seat Jaeb Theatre. The audience will sit at cabaret tables; there’ll be a working bar in the room. And the taking of photos (and videos) is encouraged (during the musical numbers only). The atmosphere is part of what Brecht called “workingman’s theater.”
Threepenny is Jobsite’s latest “niche” musical, following Return to the Forbidden Planet, Silence! The Musical and last year’s LIZZIE (a musical adaptation of the tale of notorious hatchet murderess Lizzie Borden).
Musical director Jeremy Douglass, who also did the job for LIZZIE, hit a snag when he received the score for The Threepenny Opera: It specified that the stage band include a horn section.
“Horn players are hard to find and lock down for long periods of time,” Douglass explains. “I said ‘Hey, why don’t I re-orchestrate the entire score, for a band that I know that I can put together?’ In other words, the band I used for LIZZIE.
“David said yeah, so I did that, a couple months of work. Well, we did some early promo for the show, with my arrangements, and the Kurt Weill Foundation sent us a notice that said ‘You can’t do that.’ So we had to roll it all back and go back to the beginning.”
In other words, he had to scrap every new orchestration he’d composed. And find horn players (which he did).
And what of that “new” orchestral music he put so much time into?
“I have plans for it,” Douglass says with a sinister grin. “But nothing legal.”
This article appears in Oct 12-19, 2017.