A lavish ‘Threepenny Opera’
The city of Patras has started to present, despite many glitches, its events as European Cultural Capital for 2006 and is hoping to attract visitors from other cities, especially Athens. In the meantime, it has decided to send to Athens a large-scale production by the well-known Regional Municipal Theater of Patras. This is a rich and particularly well done staging of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil’s renowned «Threepenny Opera,» which opened at Athens’s Veaki Theater just recently and will run through Easter. This is not the first time the Patras troupe has brought one of its productions to Athens for a long run of shows – last year, for instance, it brought Vassilis Papavassileiou’s «If on a Winter Night…» which was staged at the Technis Theater. Yet this year, the strange initiative to bring a show of 19 actors and six musicians to the theatrically saturated Athens is based on the fact that the show was highly successful in Patras – sold out to the very end. It was performed at the Apollo Stage shortly before the holidays; this stage is now readying for a comedy by Goldoni, directed by Vassilis Papavassileiou, with which the Regional Municipal Theater of Patras will also participate in the Patras 2006 Carnival Cycle. Artistic Director of the Regional Municipal Theater of Patras Themis Moumoulidis has also directed this well-known play by Brecht, to Kurt Weil’s wonderful music. «The plot is very well-known,» said Moumoulidis. «Its main motto is what one of its characters, Mack the Knife, the leader of the thieves, says shortly before being executed: that the real thieves are the banks, not the bank robbers. The whole play is about the modern financial system and its structure, meaning the way that society works. We have Mack the Knife, the thieves’ leader, who is better than anyone else and the only ideologist in the play. Then we have the chief of police, who deals with everyone, the respectable Mr Peachum, who in reality is the leader of a group of beggars, thieves and prostitutes and Jenny, the head of the prostitutes. It is shocking how much Peachum, for instance, is reminiscent of… a president of a workers’ union. He threatens the chief of police that he will fill the streets with his crowd of beggars during the queen’s coronation. I believe today’s unionists act along these lines. Brecht doesn’t only go against plutocrats, but he also cries out against the workers’ wretched conditions, although he is on their side. He doesn’t sell himself.» Moumoulidis went on to explain why the performance has been described as a large-scale one. «There are so many actors on stage, a six-member orchestra, because our music is not ready-made, prose, 23 songs, a lot of dance numbers, 100 striking costumes and lights, especially for the musical, an original modern set design and a printed program which we are proud of – is that enough? It is definitely a rich spectacle, a folk theater in the good sense. I do not think there will be another production like it in Athens this year.» According to Moumoulidis, the show’s greatest strength lies in its cast: Yiannis Bezos plays Mack the Knife, Tania Trypi plays Polly, Taxiarchis Hanos plays Mr Peachum, Ilias Zervos is the chief of police, Marouska Panayiotopoulou is Jenny, and there are also Theodora Siarkou, Angelos Bouras, Dimitris Voyiatzis, Fotis Spyros and others. The orchestration was carried out by Theodoris Economou and Yiannis Belonis and the sets and costumes were designed by Giorgos Patsas. The choreography is by Fokas Evangelinos, while the director also adapted the play. «I saw this play as an opportunity to address theater’s current political role. Theater today has huge problems, but they are not dealt with seriously. I think theater should take another turn, it should be present in its time. I believe us theater artists are not present today…» Veaki Theater, 32 Stournari Street, tel 210.522.3522.
