If Barrie Kosky hadn’t already made his mark in the world of theatre, he’s now done so literally: the acclaimed director once regarded as the enfant terrible of Australian performing arts has carved his initials into Bertolt Brecht’s desk.
It must have been hard to resist, really.
Developing his production of the Brecht and Weill masterpiece The Threepenny Opera at the Berliner Ensemble, Kosky was working in Das Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, the very place the show first made a sensation in 1928.
“It was a thrill to sit behind Brecht’s desk in his own theatre, directing the play he wrote for that stage,” the director told AAP.
And it was only on the leg of the desk once occupied by the famed playwright and director, promised Kosky, who himself has become one of the most in-demand opera directors in the world.
Another thrill has been exporting The Threepenny Opera for its Australian premiere at the 2024 Adelaide Festival, where Kosky, who directed the 1996 festival, has a ready audience.
His previous festival shows include Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel in 2022, Mozart’s The Magic Flute in 2019 and Handel’s Saul in 2017.
If reviews are anything to go by, Kosky’s version may become a definitive production of the classic by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, with score by Kurt Weill, first staged in Berlin in 1928.
The Threepenny Opera is something like the Underbelly of musical theatre, the story of the criminal Macheath (known as Mack the Knife) and his many lovers and enemies set on the streets of London.
But this production happens in an abstract contemporary world, a labyrinth of desire, loneliness and narcissism without a definitive time or place.
The show begins with a sparkling curtain of tinsel, through which a painted face emerges to sing the classic Mack the Knife – the women are lining up for Macheath, and the body count is rising now he’s back in town.
When the glittering facade rises, it reveals a cage-like structure within which much of the action takes place, an edifice born of various inspirations.
“The sewers underneath a city, a labyrinth, a dead skeleton of a building, a metal street map … claustrophobic spaces where you cannot stand up straight,” he said.
The actors trained on the structure in their rehearsal studio, and for any audience members who were wondering, Kosky confirmed there were plenty of bruises and banged heads as they climbed about.
That was far from the biggest challenge, as the Berliner Ensemble tried repeatedly to stage the production during the pandemic.
The premiere had to be postponed five times as theatres unexpectedly closed down.
It made for a rehearsal period that lasted more than a year, full of messy experimentation and dead ends.
“It was worth it in the end, theatre should be messy to create, like a kitchen,” Kosky said.
It’s worth noting original rehearsals for The Threepenny Opera, just shy of a century ago, were reputedly chaotic.
A flawed masterpiece, The Threepenny Opera is a tricky beast to act in or direct, Kosky said, due to the contrast between Brecht’s dark lyrics (Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts!) and Weill’s jazz inflected score.
“There is a tension between what the text says and what the music communicates that makes the piece very hard to put on stage,” he said.
What’s more, Brecht’s anti-capitalist message (which many audience members apparently missed altogether when it was initially staged) needs to be managed carefully, and freed from the dramatic danger zones of dogma and manifesto.
It’s an almost impossible balancing act – a bit like singing a high note while perched on some onstage scaffolding.
There’s not a single character with conscience on stage all night, and yet Gabriel Schneider’s Macheath, along with the rest of the cast, make it all look somehow attractive.
On the other side of the world from Berlin, almost a century since it was first staged, the message of The Threepenny Opera is just as clear as when it was first carved out.
Love is still for sale, and desire, jealousy and narcissism aren’t going anywhere.
The Threepenny Opera plays at Her Majesty’s Theatre until Sunday, March 10.
AAP travelled with the assistance of the Adelaide Festival.
Source Agencies
