When I was a kid, our elementary school class went to see Our Town and Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci. At summer camp we also saw Mummenschanz and the One Reel Vaudeville Show.
Of the four, two were new works, two very old works. No one cared. No one cared when they were written or devised. No one cared who was in the cast. No one cared how realistic the action was. No one commented on period instrumentation or the 432 Hz tuning. The only criteria for enjoying any of the four would have been enjoying any of the four, on whatever basis children are supposed to enjoy anything.
Theater in Seattle, and America in general (witness numerous discussions on HowlRound Commons) has become just a bit too worried about other things. Rather than tend to the simplicity of whether or not a production is actually enjoyable, discussions and press releases and scholastic sessions follow a predictable schema.
- The “value” of a piece must be explicit and exclaimed.
- That value must be politically savvy.
- That value must reflect a higher value in theater or art in the 21st Century: namely, that it has measurable utility, because sponsors require numbers.
- That value is informed by biographical detail about the makers, because counting the numbers of queer folk, ethnicities, and ideological labels is better than aesthetics (again, because they are measurable).
- Statements of intention supersede quality of execution, because making people feel good about you is more important than making them like art.
- Any work adhering to this set of values that are good for you is by definition a “good” production.
This is the recipe for frictionless theater: smooth as a baby’s arse, safe as mother’s milk, boring as an old uncle’s slideshow. Most of this stems from a fatuous return of the intentional fallacy and biographical fallacy to low level edumacation, all cleaned up and represented as a quasi-academic concern for the poor and disadvantaged and socially progressive — with zero self-awareness that this act of embellishment is in fact an act of exclusion. The theater that is supposed to be oh-so-accessible while talking about all the truly important topical matters of life and raise the consciousness of everyone is also the theater wherein the price of a ticket is five to six times the hourly minimum wage. You’ll forgive me if I doubt its alleged generosity and concern.
I really don’t care why Theatre Battery chose to mount another production of Die Dreigroschenoper because lo and behold I don’t need to. What matters, first and foremost, is that it doesn’t suck.
The primary strength of the production isn’t that they include Elisabeth Hauptmann’s name on par with Bertolt Brecht’s as playwright, where other productions almost completely ignore her name. That’s cool and all, and it’s historically sound (Brecht himself listed her name first). I’m sure someone read Pamela Katz’ book The Partnership discussing the matter. But unless the rest of the production showed the same attention to details, who would care but a do-gooder?
The real strength of the production is that is brings back the dirt.
Over thirty years I’ve written disparagingly many times of Threepenny Opera productions and the incomprehensible fetish its producers have had for nicety. It’s been infuriating at best to watch big stage union productions feel like they need to make the play pretty, clean, nice. But this is a play about beggars pretending to be even worse off than they are. Making it pretty simply tells me you haven’t read the damn script.
Theatre Battery return the play to its rough roots not by slapping grime and mud on everyone but by following a concept: use an abandoned space, include the detritus left behind, and rely on the imagination of the cast and the audience. The space itself brings that all-too-rare element of roughness. No one will confuse this with The Rep or 12th Ave (thank goodness). The Battery folks simply take it to its logical conclusion.
Equally rough in the best sense is the approach to the script. Director Logan Ellis and designers Meg Powers and Bella Rivera are clearly dedicated to finding the play’s dark underbelly. I could quibble with the translation, and various omissions and inclusions. Instead I will note how very jagged everything was. Scenes felt abrasive again. Language felt startling again. In short, the cast have found away to scrape away the patina of “great play” and return the text to a state where, despite its popularity among the mindless bourgeoisie of Weimar Germany, the play remains offensive when most productions are very, very defensive indeed.
I’m also very keen on the cast itself. I always enjoy watching Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, and her turn as Polly is a lovely centerpiece for this show. It’s intelligent, naive, vulgar, and hilarious by turns, and always thoughtful as her work tends to be. The clever interpersonal dynamics from Robert MacPherson surprised me a bit, probably because I’m so used to seeing him perform solo. But it’s great to watch him work as he makes everyone around him stronger. Similarly with Richard Arum, who’s even more restrained here than normal, to good effect. Devin White is a pretty good Macheath who seems to delight in the bluntness of his character more than its charm — why do actors elide or avoid completely the poshness of Macheath? — but he understands the gritty awfulness well enough that it compensates. I like Adrienne Wells and Theron Lutes too as Jenny and Lucy. Both make me wish there were more of them on stage, and in Seattle theater as well. I haven’t seen Marnie Wingett before, but I am suitably impressed with her vocal skill and devil-may-care attitude. And Olivia Lee of course is a mistress of musicals who’s always interesting.
There are many things interesting about this production. It’s probably easiest to talk about the policy of free admission and Radical Hospitality because those are topical and sexy in the morass of tiresome and overpriced Seattle entertainment. But if it weren’t an enjoyable production, who cares? Why am I supposed to be approve of highly accessible, racially and socially diverse theater if it’s utter garbage? The standard answer is: because it’s good for you.
I call bullshit.
This notion that art has to be good for you has led to playwrights and artists being questioned “Why do you want to do this play now?” But only one answer is ever true: because I like the play and it’s on my mind. In 2025 Seattle, one can read a hundred rationalizations. This play is contemporary! This speaks to the modern conception of class and race! This play was written by someone from an underprivileged class so its variation on boy-girl romance is inherently better! To ask the basic question we ask as kids — “Is it interesting?” — is viewed currently as an act of naivety, impropriety, brutality even. But it’s the only question that matters. While G.B. Shaw’s comment that the theater is always in a low estate remains true today, it’s hopeless to assume that gutless, formless, frictionless, and dull theater is going to revive the art or draw that lost audience that prefers to have a feeling, any feeling but boredom. American theater, and certainly Seattle-area theater, needs the return of the rough.
