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3 Penny Opera
Jun. 26th, 2016 07:04 pmOr, as possibly better known, The Threepenny Opera by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weil, but updated by Simon Stephens.
This was something I wanted to see, and thought I might include it in my plays when I'm in London in August, but when SM said he would be interested we turned it into a night away together, before going to the Saturday matinée. So we had a really pleasant evening in Richmond-upon-Thames, including strolling down by the Thames. (Photo taken just after high tide)
The following day we took the tube into central London to go to the National Theatre (Olivier Stage). It turns out SM has never been to the National (or at least not for many years), which surprised me, but means I've only been with other people, or on my own, up to now.
The main draw to see the play (or musical) was Rory Kinnear playing Macheath. Many of my friends have said how good an actor he is, so I felt it was time to see for myself.
The staging was excellent, innovative and making good use of the theatre's potential. Reviews have spoken about the transfer of the story from Brecht's Berlin to the London East End, but to me it worked very well and the modernisation made sense, without screaming it was updated. As usual I knew very little about the play before I saw it, so I couldn't pre-judge it.
The other criticism I had heard was Kinnear didn't make Macheath sinister enough. This might be true of the first half, but he certainly came into his own in the second half. In the first half he seemed unpleasant without any further undertones, but it's possible my expectations of Mack the Knife were influenced more by the song than by the play. The second half brought out the real schemer and I have now added Kinnear to my list of actors to see again.
The rest of the cast were also good and convincing in the slightly over the top way required by the play, Haydn Gwynne as Mrs Peachum and Nick Holder as Peachum being particularly noteworthy. As was Jamie Beddard, an actor with cerebral palsy, who played Matthias.
Biggest laugh came straight after the interval, when Macheath said, "You're still here then. You could have left, but you chose to remain." And yes, some of the words and lyrics were a little too close to the bone to allow the escapism which might have been present normally.
This was something I wanted to see, and thought I might include it in my plays when I'm in London in August, but when SM said he would be interested we turned it into a night away together, before going to the Saturday matinée. So we had a really pleasant evening in Richmond-upon-Thames, including strolling down by the Thames. (Photo taken just after high tide)
The following day we took the tube into central London to go to the National Theatre (Olivier Stage). It turns out SM has never been to the National (or at least not for many years), which surprised me, but means I've only been with other people, or on my own, up to now.
The main draw to see the play (or musical) was Rory Kinnear playing Macheath. Many of my friends have said how good an actor he is, so I felt it was time to see for myself.
The staging was excellent, innovative and making good use of the theatre's potential. Reviews have spoken about the transfer of the story from Brecht's Berlin to the London East End, but to me it worked very well and the modernisation made sense, without screaming it was updated. As usual I knew very little about the play before I saw it, so I couldn't pre-judge it.
The other criticism I had heard was Kinnear didn't make Macheath sinister enough. This might be true of the first half, but he certainly came into his own in the second half. In the first half he seemed unpleasant without any further undertones, but it's possible my expectations of Mack the Knife were influenced more by the song than by the play. The second half brought out the real schemer and I have now added Kinnear to my list of actors to see again.
The rest of the cast were also good and convincing in the slightly over the top way required by the play, Haydn Gwynne as Mrs Peachum and Nick Holder as Peachum being particularly noteworthy. As was Jamie Beddard, an actor with cerebral palsy, who played Matthias.
Biggest laugh came straight after the interval, when Macheath said, "You're still here then. You could have left, but you chose to remain." And yes, some of the words and lyrics were a little too close to the bone to allow the escapism which might have been present normally.
