Page 6, 10th March 1972

10th March 1972

Page 6

Page 6, 10th March 1972 — Downhill all the way for threepence
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Downhill all the way for threepence

The Threepeny Opera The Prince of Wales THE Threepenny Opera isn't one-of Brecht's best plays and certainly isn't good enough to warrant revival for intrinsic merit. It has a show-stopping song, Mack the Knife, which is sung in the first five minutes. After that it's downhill all the way.
The production is inventive and lively, but not at all original. The set is a roundabout, the spotlights are much in evidence, the actors are dressed in obvious stage costumes, whether as whores or beggars; the theatricality of the play is much in evidence, which is appropriate to Brecht but no more. It is not illuminating or exciting, and it does not disguise the uncertain professionalism of the actors.
Singing on stage is very difficult and should be entrusted only to those who can sing, move around in front of an audience, and do both .these things with enough panache to convince the onlooker that they need not be embarrased or concerned in case the actor misses a note or falls into the orchestra pit. Vanessa Redgrave as Polly Peachum is not an obvious choice. but her vision of the character is thorough and well done. However, the fact that she can't sing is a real handicap.
Kurt Weill's music is in the main so tuneless (though subtle and accomplished) that the singer is all the more called on to make it musical. Or, if he chooses the other method, to do a Rex Harrison and deliver patter-songs. Vanessa Redgrave tries to sing but hits only eight notes out of ten. This is unfortunate particularly because apart from the song her performance is excellent. Her
dance at the wedding is a fine piece of comic movement.
Tony Richardson's production is consistent in tone and emphasises Brecht's detached and ironic attitude to his characters. The actors are used as part of the set; in crowd scenes especially where as horrifying beggars the actors close in on the audience and then vanish back into the shadows at the side of the stage, we are made continually aware that all the events of the play are political events. They happen as a result of the political structure of an individualistic society, and their selfishness and greed in turn create their world.
An evening spent at the Threepenny Opera isn't wasted. It is as good as most plays on in the West End now, and Weill's music is always worth listening to. When I saw it the audiece seemed enthusiastic; particularly enthusiaStic, unfortunately, about Barbara Windsor as Lucy. Miss Windsor gave as selfish a performance as an ingenious actress with Joan Littlewood's training behind her could well give.
Success for the Lunts
IN Robert Sherwood's Re-" union in Vienna, the Lunts scored one of their many great successes.
Margaret Leighton and Nigel Patrick are not likely to be remembered for their performance in the revival of the same play at the Piccadilly Theatre. The fault seems to be that of the director. rather than the actors. The play has been treated as a comedy with almost farcial overtones, whereas it is a delicate straight play. The Viennese of. the Habsburgs, in search of their past, are pathetic, but they never lacked dignity. Sherwood intended us to laugh with them, not at them. Michael Aldridge's interpretation of Anton Krug is nearest to that which the playwright must
have intended, Margaret Leighton, had she been in a different production, would have been excellent, but alas! Nigel Patrick was entirely miscast. Many of the details of the production were inaccurate.
Jonathan Kemp
Martyr to gay lib
I SUPPOSE it was inevit
able; sooner or later someone was going to turn Oscar Wilde into a ballet, having turned the poor man —God rest his soul—into everything else from a scapegoat to the first martyr in the gay lib. pantheon. Michael Somes plays Wilde in Joe Layton's 0.W., premiered by the Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre on February 22. Advisedly I say plays, for this is a character, rather than dancing, role devised as a stark reality amid the fantasy lives swirling on its perimeter.
Now, to me there is something wrong with a ballet that needs spoken explanation to elucidate a situation, even if the words come to us in the voice of Sir John Gielgud. This ballet not only has words, it has a play within a play, with which the unpleasant Marquess of Queensberry (Kerrison Cooke) mocks at Wilde's outward posturings, and to which only one guest raises objec
tions, the sphinx-like Ada Leverson (Vyvyan Lorrayne). It has some stunning costumes by John Conklin and some good dancing by Nicholas Johnson as Bosie, Margaret Barbieri as Wilde's wife and Stephen Jefferies as a particularly nasty menial. What it hasn't got, is a heart. Wilde had one. And a soul.
Simon Boccanegra isn't exactly a pop-op as far as the Verdi repertoire is concerned, but Covent Garden's current revival of Tito Gobbi's production of 1965 is worth attention if only for the magnificent bass voice of Ruggero Raimondi who sings Fiesco, filling the theatre with superb sound allied to a fine stage presence.
Another newcomer to the Royal Opera House — 'Ingvar Wixell — gets better as the opera progresses in the title role, so that the final bassbaritone duet becomes the high-spot of the evening,
It is odd that so dramatic a a singer as Gobbi is responsible for so undramatic a production as this; it works reasonably well as far as static stage pictures go, which isn't very far, and there are some carefully researched settings, but, without individual characterisations powerful enough to flummox the imagination it all makes for rather a gloomy evening. Except, that is, for R'aimondi.
Anne Morley-Priestman




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