Most of the show takes place in San Fransisco on the night before Birdlace and his pals, shrewd Boland and innocent Bernstein (Luke Steingruby and Kevin O’Brien), ship out.
Birdlace seems like a good guy, but the 3Bs, as they call themselves, are looking for trouble. They drink, get tattoos, get in fights – and play a cruel game, Dogfight.
Best MusicalThe Threepenny Opera, New Line Theatre
Staff Pick
Jill Ritter LIndberg Macheath’s gang celebrate the boss’ wedding.
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera has everything you could want from a musical: a jazzy score, a diverse cast of shady characters and a ruthless compunction for wallowing in vice, sin and corruption. New Line Theatre mounted a savage production of the show that rubbed our faces in society’s filth and failings, and made us enjoy it despite the horrors on display. Threepenny is a sharp, cynical work that subverts your expectations at every turn, and the New Line cast embraced this ethos thoroughly. Scenic designer Rob Lippert built a grimy nocturne for them to play in, and the cast gleefully cheated and backstabbed their way through it. Familiar tunes such as “Army Song” and “Jealousy Duet” sounded fresh and intoxicating — so fresh that Brecht’s mordant lyrics were shocking all over again. Consistently surprising, eminently rewarding and endlessly fascinating, New Line’s Threepenny Opera was the show that set a new standard for St. Louis musical theater. http://www.newlinetheatre.com.
The granddaddy of dark, decadent musicals, The Threepenny Opera still packs a punch with its biting social commentary that has remained relevant through the ages. The current production being staged by New Line Theatre is fresh, vital and deliciously subversive, underscoring author Bertolt Brecht’s sly observations that crime does indeed pay, whether for a rogue like Macheath or for the pillars of a society that diminishes the humanity of the less fortunate.
New Line customarily features a tight ensemble, showcasing some of St. Louis’s shrewdest musical theater performers, while also debuting a few new artists. Their strong voices tackle the masterful jazzy score under Jeffrey Carter’s expert music direction…
Another stand-out: Luke Steingruby as Bob the Saw, one of Macheath’s imbecilic gang members. Steingruby’s facial expressions and mumblings (particularly with mouthfuls of food) garnered big laughs from the audience; his comedic timing is impressive.
One of the magical qualities of theater, and a characteristic that makes dark comedy so thoroughly enjoyable, is its ability to take characters you would avoid in real life and transform them into oddly sympathetic and completely likeable anti-heroes. Such is the case with Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s deftly nuanced, purposefully amoral comic musical “The Threepenny Opera.”
The cast is rounded out with strong performances from Reynaldo Arceno, Brian Claussen, Todd Micali, Kimi Short, Margeau Steinau, Luke Steingruby, and Larissa White. Each adds distinct quirks and qualities to their characters and the entire cast impressively harmonizes, uses dissonance, and flits through the shifting melodies.
For the next three weeks you have a choice in how you stay informed about current events: You can either suffer through another local newscast as the tone whiplashes between banal levity and grim images of oppression, crime and human misery — or you can soak up the horrible truth at New Line Theatre’s near-perfect production of The Threepenny Opera.
The opening number from New Line Theatre’s production of the show will make even diehard Darin fans – like me – find a whole new feeling in that song.
“The Threepenny Opera” is the oldest show New Line Theatre has ever staged.
It might also be the hottest, the sharpest and the best.
Luke Steingruby 