The Large Group
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Join our e-mail list Who We Are Productions Contact Us
The Threepenny Opera
By Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
29 May-21 June 2008, Maidment Theatre
CLICK HERE TO BOOK

"It is only June, but . . . The Threepenny Opera is already the theatre experience of the year." (Gilbert Wong, Metro)

Metro: " . . . a mesmerising, ambitious production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's classic that feels freshly minted, an instant classic that sets a high benchmark for theatre this year.  . . . a production that has all the qualities of a musical spectacular.  . . . It is only June, but if I had money on it, The Threepenny Opera is already the theatre experience of the year."

National Business Review: " . . . a magnificent night of razzle dazzle theatre, set in a scary and ugly criminal underworld to wonderfully oompapa jazz. This may turn out to be the production of the year in this city."

New Zealand Herald: " . . . an edgy production, full of dangerous surprises, with moments of theatrical brilliance . . . The finale is a tour-de-force with Michael Hurst's innate sense of theatricality merging with a set design that has John Verryt at his exuberant best. Productions on this scale are a rare treat - the 27 member cast and a sizzling jazz combo have triumphantly revitalised a timeless classic. Go and see it."

Lumiere Reader: "(Threepenny Opera) asks some hard questions about violence, treatment of the poor and warns against oversentimentalising reality, and director Hurst doesn’t shirk from these ideas. . . . The deus ex machina ending . . . had me in stitches . . . It was brilliantly done and sounded the perfect satirical note to round off a satisfying theatrical experience. Go and see it, it's well worth it."

Listener: "From the opening bars of Weill's harshly beautiful introduction to the sharply satirical energy of the happy ending, the show is musically excellent. Billing's singing of Pirate Jenny is recklessly fierce, Snow and Rhodes' rendition of the Cannon Song tough and compelling, and the delivery by the company of What Keeps a Man Alive electrifying".

www.theatreview.co.nz: "This post modern deconstruction is in fact classic vintage Bertolt Brecht. . . . Then there's the music, where the heart and soul of the piece is expressed with explosive passion."

Directed by Michael Hurst

Design
John Verryt
Elizabeth Whiting
Victoria Ingram
Jeremy Fern

Musical Direction
Grant Winterburn

Movement
Marianne Schultz

Performance
Keith Adams
Paul Barrett
Amanda Billing
Peter Elliott
Delia Hannah
Waimihi Hotere
Charlie McDermott
Cameron Rhodes
Roy Snow
Esther Stephens
Elizabeth Tierney
Jennifer Ward-Lealand

Read the press release.

Presented by Silo Theatre and The Large Group

Preview: Thursday 29 May at 8:00pm
Monday and Tuesday at 7:00pm
Wednesday - Saturday at 8:00pm
Matinee: Saturday 21 June at 2:00pm

At its premiere THE THREEPENNY OPERA blew Berlin apart.  It was modern, sexy, shot through with urgent, anti-capitalist politics, full of hit tunes but with brutally honest and shockingly street-wise lyrics.

A noisy hotchpotch of stock operetta characters, American jazz, John Gay’s eighteenth century world of thieves, pimps and whores recast in a mythical Victorian London and all refracted through the decadent prism of Weimar cabaret.

Nearly eighty years on it is still an explosive work.  Its classic status has too often set it at a comfortable distance, but in the world of sports-shoe sweatshops and stockpiled food, its questions still roar.  Walking down the street, being asked for money by people living on the streets or watching cops in their tight black gloves moving people on, the city becomes fractured through Brecht’s prism.  In 2008, Brecht’s salient take on the human condition couldn’t be more necessary for production.

Regarded as one of the most influential dramatic works of the twentieth century (indeed of any century), its music and songs, including the legendary "Ballad of Mack the Knife", are seminal to the development of both musical theatre and jazz itself.

THE THREEPENNY OPERA is vivid, wild, entertaining, dramatic, dark, funny, violent, sexy, provocative and very, very human.