I'm a great audience member for anything Brecht / Weil, so when I heard that LAOpera was doing
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, one I'd never seen before, with both Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone, directed by John Doyle, I was thrilled. I wish I could say that I was thrilled by the production once the curtain-call was in progress, but I wasn't
completely unentertained. Was I? I don't think so. Hmm....
Early in the show I was ecstatic; just getting to hear Audra McDonald sing "Alabama Song" was enough to make my night. The sets, costumes, movement, and stage pictures were all sharp, professional, artful. About halfway through the first act, though, this became the production's Achille's heel. Everything was so utterly composed -- contrived, even -- rich tableaus were held so long I began watching performers to see how long they could hold poses without wiggling. I finally began to get irritated when a trio of Jimmy McIntyre's buddies sang a line that suggested they were "coming at him" and they all just sat there, in the same place they perched when the song began, and, if memory serves, in the same place they were when the song ended.
Speaking of, when a character pronounces that the protagonist is to be executed by "hanging," he should be HANGED (Thanks Meg!). He should not be executed by lethal injection just because that's how Americans do it these days, or because it's easier to stage, or for whatever reason you decided to make such a silly updating of the staging. Utterly nonsensical.
That wasn't the only bad theatrical idea in the show. A lot of things about Doyle's
Mahagonny seemed either half-assed or just plain silly. That big silky red-and-black flag never really did anything for me at all, especially when a couple of chorus members were
kinda holding it up to
kinda shield Jimmy and Jenny while they
kinda fooled around on a pool table. And I couldn't abide the Court TV take on the courtroom scene. Chorus members pointed cameras at the principles while they sang and their images were projected as a live feed on a big screen above the action. It was so annoying in the way it intruded on the stage action, not to mention the fact that the idea just seems tired. It's an obvious, uninspired, problematic idea, regardless of how "of the moment" it might be.
All that said, Doyle did manage to drop the bomb of that play's last scene effectively, even if I wondered how much of the budget was allotted to the LCD sign that dropped down and flashed piercing slogans about man's cruelty as the cast was bellowing about the terrible things man does for money. I'll admit to an immediate aversion to lavish productions of plays about the evils of money. As you can imagine, all the spectacle on stage, even if a lot of it was rather effective, irritated me. Perhaps this is an irrational criticism, but has this piece become so abstracted from its original intention that Doyle didn't even feel the need to bother to acknowledge the paradox in all his flashy sets, costumes, technical trickery, and big stars? And let's not forget how much the top tickets cost in that place.
Still, my Audra was stunning, sang beautifully, moved deliciously onstage, and was overall an utter delight, as I expected. And Patti LuPone has such amazing diction I was convinced people could hear her consonants in Orange County. I just wish they'd done the show on a bare stage with minimal props and furniture, or I wish Doyle had infused the show with more passion. And I wish he'd paid attention to the fact that Jimmy McIntyre was sentenced to death by HANGING. HANGING, like with a rope tied in a noose, you know? Such deaths are grisly and horrific, shocking, moving, powerful, like this show has the potential to be if it's truly respected in the dark textures of its music and the nasty ironies of its story. Give it a chance, next time, Mr. Doyle, before you go sterilizing it, be it with your giant stage-syringe or with so much static artfulness.
