Susan Granger’s review of “The Threepenny Opera” (Broadway’s Studio 54)
Mack the Knife’s blade goes dull in this clumsy, seriously flawed reworking of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s musical masterpiece, “The Threepenny Opera,” with a lengthy (three-hour), new translation by playwright/actor Wallace Shawn.
“I wanted to get a group of people together who were really interesting and led really interesting alternative lives,” explains Roundabout Theater director Scott Elliott.
That he did. There’s Alan Cumming, formerly of “Cabaret,” who plays the murderous, opportunistic Macheath as a naughty, playful, bisexual sprite sporting a Mohawk, chirpy pop star Cyndi Lauper, PETA activist and cabaret singer Nellie McKay, “Saturday Night Live” alumna Ana Gasteyer, several downtown performance artists (David Cale, Brian Butterick), the cross-dressing nemesis of Star Jones, Flotilla DeBarge (a.k.a. Kevin Rennard) and Carlos Leon, best known as Madonna’s trainer and father of her daughter Lourdes. The tacky costumes are designed by Target diva Isaac Mizrahi, who obviously scoured sex shops for fetishistic touches like black vinyl leggings.
Problem is: cynical, caricaturish vulgarity rules the entire production, perhaps in a provocative attempt to match the bitter, anarchic shock value of the original back in 1928. The fabled Lucy Brown, for example, turns out to be a man in drag (Brian Charles Rooney) who, literally, flashes his genitals. And that much obvious, cartoonish debauchery alienates the primarily middle-aged audience, many of whom either leave or fall asleep, despite having paid more than $100 a ticket. Which is too bad since 70 year-old Jim Dale (“Barnum”) delivers the most memorable turn as the criminal mastermind of Victorian London, Mr. Peachum, particularly when he warbles tongue-twisting numbers like “The Song of Inadequacy of Human Striving.”
Bottom line: this incarnation of “The Threepenny Opera” is boring and interminable. Save your money.