Weekend Theatrics
URTC presents Brecht’s Threepenny Opera


PHOTO: K. Fordney
Daniel Magill (graduate-fine arts) and Christina DeAngelis act out a scene in The Threepenny Opera.

By KATIE MATYAS
Collegian Staff Writer

Dim orange lights illuminate the dingy tiled walls of an abandoned New York City subway station.

Police tape and a stage full of props create the scene for an underground opera by street performers. They combine their individual talents to seduce an audience with everything from jazz to tango.

You can catch The Threepenny Opera at 8 tonight and tomorrow in the Playhouse Theatre. Tickets are on sale at Eisenhower Auditorium; prices are $8.50 for students and $10.50 for the general public.

The School of Theatre Arts faculty member Cary Libkin directs the University Resident Theatre Company in their rendition of the opera -- a 70-year-old Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill production with a modern twist.

The original play generated numerous revivals, a 1931 film, a novel and countless recordings.

"Weill wanted to entice new audience members to the opera and shake up the old ones -- we want to do the same," Libkin said.

The Threepenny Opera is a play within a play about the injustices of a corrupt bourgeois society, related by the very poor who were suppressed by the greedy rich.

The play stars Mack the Knife, a notorious gangster from London, who is ruthless on the streets and charming with the ladies. Mack the Knife is played by Daniel Magill (graduate-fine arts).

"He has a presence from his legend even today, and it's fun to see where the legend came from," Magill said.

The play takes place in present day New York City, while the opera they are performing takes place in Victorian England.

"Brecht was interested in creating not so much an opera about beggars, but an opera put on by beggars," Libkin said in a news release. "Brecht seems to ask what would happen if a play about class and crime, about making money off the poor and handicapped, were produced not by the esthete, but by the very lowlife which forms the core of the play."

The lessons taught about the evils of a corrupt society in the 1920s may seem somewhat antiquated today, but Libkin said the issues are still modern.

"Both Brecht and Weill wished to provoke and stimulate their traditional audience. As we were conceptualizing our production, we wondered how do we, in 1998, attempt to do the same things with our audience?" Libkin said. "I think what you will experience in the Playhouse is our answer to that question."