The Threepenny Opera Program

FROM THE DIRECTOR T

MUSICAL NUMBERS ACT ONE

Overture The Threepenny Band Ballad of Mack The Knife Company Morning Chorale of J.J Peachum Mr Peachum “What a Twat” Song Mr and Mrs Peachum Wedding Song The Gang

he story we are telling this evening contains characters with no redeemable qualities, presented in a self-consciously theatrical style informed by the very venue itself.

Cannon Song Mack, Tiger and The Gang

The world of The Threepenny Opera is a dystopic one containing unsettling overtones of truth – a nightmare rooted in reality.

Inequality, poverty, slavery, and viscously abusive relationships proudly parade themselves to Weill’s sticky music, Brecht’s bleak assessment of humanity, and Stephen’s caustic adaptation.

Love Song Mack and Polly

Grating harmonies, incomplete phrases, clichés, inventive rhythms, driving jazz, and intoxicating musicality lend a surreal Weimar cabaret edge to this story of Mack the Knife.

Brecht said, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” The mirrors of the Spiegeltent reflect the theatrical illusion as well as the reality of the audience themselves.

This dialectic suggests the spectator confronts inequality, iniquity and inequity with a ‘hammer’ of change.

We had a lot fun playing with these characters, fully understanding their irredeemable features and despicable choices. Join us as we judge them by their deeds by all means, but question how they were created, and to what extent their context might have forged their character.

Fun is actually at the heart of Brecht’s Epic Theatre, for who doesn’t want to come to the theatre to be entertained? And dark humour is a very human way to confront our demons.

Andrew Stocker Head of Drama

Barbara Song Polly Wedding Song (Reprise) The Gang First Threepenny Finale Mr and Mrs Peachum, Polly, Company Polly’s Song Polly The Ballad of Lust and Desire Mrs Peachum Pimp’s Ballad Mack and Jenny Second Threepenny Finale Mack, Mrs Peachum, Company

ACT TWO

Ballad of the Free Mack Jealousy Duet Lucy and Polly The Ballad of Lust and Desire (Reprise) Mrs Peachum Song of Human Weakness Mr Peachum Reminiscence Mr Peachum Solomon Song Jenny Call from the Grave Mack Epitaph Mack Third Threepenny Finale Company

SCENES

PROLOGUE

On a night in the heart of London.

The beggars beg. The thieves steal. The whores whore.

And a pair of balladeers sing a ballad.

Scene 1 With the intention of combating the conditions in which the poor of London find themselves, barber JJ Peachum has extended his establishment to engage in an attempt to touch the city’s soul.

Scene 2 In the Savoy Hotel, the bandit Mack the Knife celebrates his wedding to Polly Peachum, the youthful daughter of the King of the Beggars.

Scene 3 For JJ Peachum, who understands the injustice of the world, the loss of his daughter means complete ruin.

Scene 4 In which, on Thursday Evening, Mack the Knife bids farewell to his wife in order to escape from his blood thirsty step-father and flee to the Port of Dover.

Interlude In the backstreets of Shoreditch Mrs Peachum strikes a deal.

Scene 5 Inside a brothel on Grape Lane, the Workers and their clients speculate as to the whereabouts of the good Captain.

INTERVAL Scene 6 In the prison cells underneath Limehouse Station, Tiger Brown makes a last request.

Scene 7 Jenny and Tiger Brown visit Peachum’s Parlour, where a gang of poppy-wearing beggars is gathered.

Scene 8 At Limehouse Police Station there is a sense that something remarkable is about to happen.

Scene 9 A crowd is gathering outside the Police Station. Captain Macheath has a hood over his head.

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CAST

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COLIN JIANG —Mr Peachum

FLETCHER VON ARX —Mack The Knife

HARRY WATSON —Tiger Brown

HUGH CRAN —Jack the Jag

CONNOR INSTON —Shaq the Shark

ZAID IMRAN —Dimitri the Dentist

LEXIE SMITH —Mrs Peachum

ANNABEL NELSON —Polly Peachum

EMMANUELLE D’ADAMO —Jenny

KIMAYA GUNATILAKA —Lucy Brown

WILL JENKIN —Balladeer

SADIE HUGHES —Balladeer

JAY BABBAR —Worker

RAPHAEL CHAMPION —Worker

ANDY BISHOP —Jimmy Retail

COOPER CARBONE —Robert the Iceman

THOMAS NEWMAN —Walter the Scholar

JONTY NEIL —Matthias the Shadow

NED CHESLER —Worker

SARAH FELDT —Worker

TIM HOWARD —Worker

MACKENZIE JOHNSTON —Worker

BILLY ALLSOP —Officer Smith

JADE BISHOP —Filch

MAX KOSTOPOULOS —Worker

DANIEL STROJEK —Pastor Kimble

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TOMMY AUWARDT —Ensemble, Prisoner, King

JACKSON HAINTZ —Ensemble, Security

NATHAN BOSMANS —Ensemble, Police

JESSICA CHIPPERFIELD MATHILDA CHIPPERFIELD —Ensemble, Prisoner —Ensemble, Prisoner

MILLI HENSGEN —Ensemble

MIA HUMPHRIES —Ensemble

EUGENE GOH —Ensemble, Security

THE

THREEPENNY BAND

CHARLIE LEONG —Ensemble, Prisoner

CHARLES LEWIS —Ensemble

LUCAS HO —Ensemble, Prisoner

FRASER ROWE —Ensemble, Police

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EVIE VAMVAKARIS —Ensemble

CHARLIE WEICKHARDT —Ensemble

HAMISH WESTCOTT —Ensemble, Police

Reed 1

BRENNAN HAMILTON-SMITH

Keyboard, Harmonium Reed 2

Trumpet 1

Trumpet 2 Trombone

Guitar, Banjo Percussion

Show Caller

RAVIN DESAI

Sound Operators

NOAH CATTERALL

Banner Projection Operator AV/Video Operators

Backstage Coordinator

RICO TOWERS —Ensemble, Prisoner

BEN BISHOP

Cello, Keyboard

Lighting Operators LUCAS HU —Ensemble, Police

Conductor

CHARLIE CALLAGHAN JP MA MARCUS KATSOULOTOS HAYDN HAMMERTON JOSHUA NG EDWARD PILL

PETER DUMSDAY

LACHLAN MCLEAN BRUNO SIKETA

DANIEL WATSON IAIN FARAGHER GRANT ARTHUR JACK PANTAZIS DARBY LEE

ROBERT ALLAN SCOTT WEATHERSTON

CGS TECH CREW

ALEX ZHANG —Ensemble

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PRODUCTION TEAM

Director ANDREW STOCKER Musical Director BEN BISHOP

Production Coordinator JESSICA JOHNSON

Costume Designer JENNIFER BENNIE Set and Prop Designer MARK WAGER

Technical Coordinator STUART FELDT Guest Choreographer (Pimp’s Ballad)

MIRANDA MCDONALD

Costume Technician BREANNA HANDFIELD

THANK YOU

HELEN THOMAS ALLEN WEEKS

CGS FACILITIES DEPARTMENT

CGS FRIENDS OF PERFORMING ARTS

BERTOLT BRECHT

B

ertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes.

Until 1924, Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied medicine and served in an army hospital. In this period, his first play ‘Baal’ was written, and his first success, ‘Trommeln in der Nacht’ took place. During this period he also developed a violently antibourgeois attitude that reflected his generation’s deep disappointment in the civilization that had come crashing down at the end of World War I. In Berlin with the composer Kurt Weill, he wrote the satirical, successful ballad opera ‘Die Dreigroschenoper’ (The Threepenny Opera) and the opera ‘Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny’.

In these years he developed his theory of “epic theatre” and an austere form of irregular verse. He also became a Marxist.

Make-up Designer MARTINA LINDSEY

In 1933 he went into exile—in Scandinavia, mainly in Denmark, and then in the United States, where he worked Hollywood. In Germany his books were burned and his citizenship was withdrawn. He was cut off from the German theatre; but between 1937 and 1941 he wrote most of his great plays, and many of his major theoretical essays and dialogues.

Set and Prop Assistants

The plays of Brecht’s exile years became famous in the author’s own and other productions: notable among them are utter Courage und ihre Kinder’ (Mother Courage and Her Children), eben des Galilei (The Life of Galileo), and ‘Der gute Mensch von Sezuan’ (The Good Woman of Setzuan).

Hair Stylist KERRIN BARKER

Costume Assistants AMY CHIDGZEY ALICE ROBERTS

STEPHEN BENNIE DAVID BENNIE

Sound Effect Coordinator TARA SURI

Poster Design SIMON BARRY

Photographer KEN NAKANISHI Technical Equipment and Operation

STARLITE PRODUCTIONS

Vocal Coach CURTIS BAYLISS

Rehearsal Pianists GREG ROBERTS PETER DUMSDAY CURTIS BAYLISS

Front of House Coordinators DAVID BENNIE MATTHEW WANFORD Director of Spiegeltent International

Facilities & Operations Manager

DAVID BATES

JESSICA STRYKER

Property Manager BRIAN KOON

In 1949, Brecht went to Berlin to help stage Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (with his wife, Helene Weigel, in the title part) at Reinhardt’s old Deutsches Theater in the Soviet sector. This led to formation of the Brechts’ own company, the Berliner Ensemble, and to permanent return to Berlin. Often suspect in eastern Europe because of his unorthodox aesthetic theories, he yet had a great triumph at the Paris Théâtre des Nations in 1955, and in the same year in Moscow he received a Stalin Peace Prize. He died of a heart attack in East Berlin the following year.

Brecht was, first, a superior poet, with a command of many styles and moods. As a playwright he was an intensive worker, a restless piecer-together of ideas not always his own, a sardonic humorist, and a man of rare musical and visual awareness. As a theoretician he made principles out of his preferences—and even out of his faults.

Senior Maintenance Officer TOM WILSON

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KURT WEILL K

urt Weill WAS German-born American composer who created a revolutionary operatic style containing sharp social satire in collaboration with the writer Bertolt Brecht.

Weill studied privately with Albert Bing and at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin with Engelbert Humperdinck.

Settling in Berlin, he studied under Ferruccio Busoni, beginning as a composer of instrumental works. His early music was expressionistic, experimental, and abstract. His first two operas, ‘Der Protagonist’ and ‘Royal Palace’ established his position as one of Germany’s most promising young opera composers.

Weill’s first collaboration as composer with Bertolt Brecht was on the singspiel (or “songspiel,” as he called it) ‘Mahagonny’ which was a succès de scandale at the Baden-Baden Festival in 1927. This work sharply satirizes life in an imaginary America that is also Germany. Weill then wrote the music and Brecht provided the libretto for ‘Die Dreigroschenoper’ (The Threepenny Opera), which was a transposition of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. This work established both the topical opera and the reputations of the composer and librettist. Weill’s music for it was in turn harsh, mordant, jazzy, and hauntingly melancholy. ‘Mahagonny’ was elaborated as a full-length opera, ‘Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny’ (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), and first presented in Leipzig in 1930. Widely considered Weill’s masterpiece, the opera’s music showed a skillful synthesis of American popular music, ragtime, and jazz.

After his production of the opera ‘Die Bürgschaft’, Weill’s political and musical ideas and his Jewish birth made him persona non grata to the Nazis, and he left Berlin. His music was banned in Germany until after World War II. Weill resumed his career in New York City, where he wrote music for plays, including Paul Green’s ‘Johnny Johnson’ and Franz Werfel’s ‘Eternal Road’ His operetta ‘Knickerbocker Holiday’ appeared in 1938 with a libretto by Maxwell Anderson, followed by the musical play ‘Lady in the Dark’.

Weill’s American folk opera ‘Down in the Valley’ was much performed. Two of his songs, the ‘Moritat von Mackie Messer’ (Mack the Knife) from ‘Die Dreigroschenoper’ and ‘September Song’ from ‘Knickerbocker Holiday’, have remained popular.

Weill’s Concerto for violin, woodwinds, double bass, and percussion (1924), Symphony No. 1 (1921; “Berliner Sinfonie”), and Symphony No. 2 (1934; “Pariser Symphonie”), works praised for their qualities of invention and compositional skill, were revived after his death.

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piegeltents are hand-hewn pavilions used as traveling dance halls, bars and entertainment salons since they were created in the early 20th century. There are only a hand-full of these unique and legendary ‘tents of mirrors’ left in the world today.

Built of wood, mirrors, canvas, leaded glass and detailed in velvet and brocade, each has its own personality and style.

The most beautiful of the last remaining Belgian Spiegeltents, The Famous Spiegeltent, was built in 1920 by master craftsmen Oscar Mols Dom and Loius Goor. This Grande Dame has spent her lifetime at the bequest of festivals and fairgrounds throughout Europe and beyond, playing host to the world’s greatest cabaret artists, musicians and circus burlesque performers.

Since Marlene Dietrich sang ‘Falling In love Again’ on The Famous Spiegeltent stage in the 1930’s, its magic mirrors have reflected thousands of images of artists, audiences and exotic gatherings.

The Famous Spiegeltent is the very essence of a festival club, ‘kabaret salon’ and intimate concert hall. Like every old theatre, her ghosts travel with her, woven into ballooning velvet canopies, circular teak dance floor and stained, cut-glass windows. Her intimate booths, ornate bar and bevelled mirror columns hold a million secrets.

THE FAMOUS SPIEGELTENT WWW.SPIEGELTENT.NET

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