"The Threepenny Opera," Roy visits, dinner

So, last night I saw The Threepenny Opera, which was one of the productions I was anticipating most this season. The show has Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper, Nellie McKay, Ana Gasteyer, and Jim Dale in its cast, all of whom were very good. The show was quite bizarre, featuring drag queens, minimalist settings with neon signs announcing settings and supertitles adding to the traditional Brechtian "alienation effect," by which the audience is always to be made aware that it is watching actors on stage performing a play. This is further carried out by having the cast put on their costumes and apply their makeup onstage at the beginning of the show and by removing the curtain call altogether. Another neat aspect of the show was that it was done in Studio 54, and the grungy feel of the theatre made it feel kind of sight-specific (sort of like Rent in the Nederlander).

All of this really intrigued me, so I had a great time, but I could tell that most people were perplexed or bored. All of the actors were particularly good, particularly Alan Cumming as Macheath ("Mack the Knife") and Ana Gasteyer, who had a great comic sense.

To give a little background, The Threepenny Opera began as Die Dreigroschenoper in German and was translated numerous times. It's written by Kurt Weill (music) and Bertolt Brecht (lyrics and book). Despite the fact that the title suggests it's an opera, it's really about 2/3 dialogue and 1/3 music.

The premise of the show is sort of simple. Macheath, a murderer, marries Polly Peachum. He loves both Polly and Lucy (played in this prouction by a man). The Peachums attempt to get Macheath, who is in with the police, arrested, and, after some effort finally succeed. As he's about to hang, there's a wild deus ex machina, and Macheath is released. Essentially, the moral is that life is one big deus ex machina and that "life's a bitch/and then you die" (according to the Donmar Warehouse translation performed in London). This production featured a new translation by character actor Wallace Shawn (the voice of Rex in Toy Story) that was amped up with some extra profanities (delivered flawlessly by Ana Gasteyer and others). Overall the show was great fun, and I met Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper afterwards and talked to some older gay men who were also at the stage door about some various theatre things.

After the show, Roy Zuniga stayed at my dorm so he could suprprise his girlfriend, Zaina, in the morning. Both of them are friends of mine from high school who were in my gym class.

Today was mostly slow. I lounged around most of the day and then went out to dinner. I got tilapia and pound cake; both were really good. I'd never had tilapia before and was very pleasantly surprised.

That's all for now. I'm thinking of going to Central Park tomorrow, and Wednesday (which is kind of far off now) is The Wedding Singer on Broadway.