Marta Pazos' Brecht: aseptic and freeze-dried

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill conceived The Threepenny Opera within a specific context, Victorian London, and in a particular physical space, the backstreets of Soho, inhabited by traitors, murderers, prostitutes, and exploiters. The versions we have known in our country —Mario Gas's, premiered at the Teatre Romea in 1984, and Calixto Bieito's, premiered precisely at the Grec Festival in 2002— varied the context but maintained the physical space. Above all, they maintained the characteristics that define the characters (from their stage presence to their costumes) and the brutality of the capitalist society they describe and satirize.

Marta Pazos, however, has dispensed with all of that with a monochromatic proposal that unifies the set design, costumes, and characters through textures of the color gray. She does this, from the outset, by turning the court of beggars into a flock of friendly pigeons, surely from Barcelona, who liven up the preface of the comedy by walking among the audience. The director moves away from the many bright colors with which she has dressed their debut at the Liceu (The Marriage of Figaro) but maintains its desire to print a dominant visual stamp on any production it directs. Nevertheless, with this decision, the contrasts disappear, the individuality of the characters fades, and the whole becomes a shallow caricature closer to the futile elegance of a Marivaux comedy than to the roguish spirit of the German cabaret from which the original work is born; closer to the pleasant photographs of David Hamilton than to the stark ones of Weegee (Arthur Fellig).

At the beginning, Pazos promises a cabaret that breaks the fourth wall, but in the end there is no game with the audience. Among the successes of the play are the choreographies (Mabel Olea), good musical direction (Dani Espasa) and careful direction of actors and actresses. It is a committed cast in which Marta Bernal stands out as aalter ego of a clownish Marta Pazos and as Mrs. Peachum; the vocal clarity of Eduard Farelo (Peachum); the powerful Song of Solomon by Jenny (Julia Truyol), and especially Polly by Miriam Moukhles interpreting both the Jenny of the Pirates as in the fantastic Jealousy duet with Clara Mingueza (wonderful Lucy). Nao Albet's Mackie the Knife is almost a very agitated and unempathetic comic book drawing that improves towards the end, whether in prison or at the gallows. We greatly fear that the fiftieth anniversary of the Grec will not be remembered for this Brecht.