The Threepenny Opera is a musical satire set in a future dystopia. Known as a “play with music,” it tells the story of villain Mack the Knife and his marriage to Polly Peachum, despite her parents’ dismay.
The play, directed by Brian Richmond, starts off strong, with an entertaining beginning scene featuring “footed” boxes running frantically around the stage to the first musical number.
The first act has a much slower pace compared to the rest of the acts; at one point, I was beginning to wonder when it would end.
The costumes in the show are very original, featuring accents of plastic garbage bags and netting, painted cardboard, and duct tape, which was a very clever way to upcycle the costumes.
The characters’ vocals are very impressive, reaching high notes cleanly and staying in key.
One particularly enjoyable scene was when Polly meets Mack’s mistress, Lucy Brown, while he is in jail; their duet is quite enjoyable and seeing Polly’s at-first oblivious reaction is entertaining.
At the end of the show, when Mack is about to be publicly hanged, Mr. Peachum stops and tells the audience that the ending is going to be happy and the fairy-godmother-esque character comes out, which makes for a cheesy ending. But the cheesiness is redeemed in the last song, which features the lyrics “Not all endings turn out happy/most happy endings happen on stage.”
The Threepenny Opera also covers heavy topics such as homelessness and rape, and managed to talk about religion without being offensive. Although Threepenny was rather long and had a few dry spots in the first half, the vocals, certain songs and scenes, and the end number made up for it.
The Threepenny Opera
Until November 21
$15, Phoenix Theatre, University of Victoria
finearts.uvic.ca/theatre/phoenix/