16 Aug 2023
Local audiences can enjoy a preview of OVO Theatre Company’s rollicking new production of The Threepenny Opera before it heads to the Minack Theatre in Cornwall and London’s West End.
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s show, which is part of the Roman Theatre Open Door Festival, runs from August 31 to September 6.
It’s a bumper day in the beggary business – the thieves are on the make, the whores are on the pull and the police are cutting deals to keep it all out of sight.
While notorious London gangster Macheath – aka Mack the Knife – is newly (and unfaithfully) married to Polly Peachum, her father isn’t too happy about it.
Mr Peachum, head of London’s beggar mafia, and proprietor of the shady establishment, ‘The Beggar’s Friend’, is certain Macheath will affect his nefarious but profitable pick-pocketing and begging business so he decides to get Macheath out of the way…without fully realising just how well the gangster is connected…
Artistic director Adam Nichols said: “The Threepenny Opera defies conventional time periods and settings. Written in 1928, and set in Victorian London, it does not belong fully to either of these periods. We have imagined another world for our production – a factory for musicals, in which The Threepenny Opera is the dangerous, bad, disruptive younger brother of more conventional, saccharine shows.
“It is such a great story with some deliciously meaty characters and a wonderful score – all of which have endured and continued to entertain audiences for nearly a hundred years.
“We have an excellent cast who will be doubling up as musicians and I’m confident our production will work brilliantly at the Roman Theatre on our specially constructed thrust stage which reaches out to a capacity audience of 250 per performance.
“The audience will feel completely immersed in the production and may have to watch out because there will be (fake) pickpockets about!
If you don’t know the show, it contains some of the most incredible music, and it is widely regarded as the first “proper” musical – even though it has the word ‘opera’ in the title.
“Weill was writing for a mass audience, and the show has enjoyed great commercial success over the years, even though it has been produced relatively rarely in the past 30 years or so.
“Our audiences will love the multi rolling and the generally bonkers style of this production, the breaking of the fourth wall and the outrageously funny black comedy – it is going to be an absolute riot!”
Co-director and soprano Julia Mintzer said: “The Roman Theatre gives you so much: ambience, beautiful landscape, what the sky might be doing that night…you really have to work the story the space tells into the story the set creates. The biggest challenge is the lighting. I’m going to have to find very different ways from usual to narrow the audience’s focus.”
Musical director and conductor Lada Valešová added: “The music tells the story in such a direct, often brutal way, yet with great charm and humanity. Weill’s score incorporates so many influences from the baroque in the overture, to the opera recitative in the third finale, from the music of the cabarets and dance hall with their Foxtrots to a medieval chant in the Gang Wedding Chorus. The music at once mocks and consoles, with the moments of frenzy, lyrical yet sardonic truths about love, jealous catfights and unflinching testaments on human condition. It gives the characters another deep dimension and makes us identify and recognise them as one of us, with our shared humanity.
“I believe this is the first time that the Kurt Weill Foundation has given permission for ‘The Threepenny Opera’ to be performed in an open-air venue, which is a great honour…and a great responsibility! We are using a brilliant translation by Jeremy Sams, which makes it completely relatable and allows the music to make an immediate impact on the listener.
“Usually, the musicians remain in the pit while the action takes place above on the stage, but our production makes that ‘them and us’ formula redundant. I envisage all of us being constantly part of the drama throughout the story as it unfolds.”
Tickets available from ovo.org.uk/big-shows/threepenny-opera/
