Customer Reviews

Happy End (2006 ACT Cast)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've enjoyed the Capriccio German-language recording of Happy End for years. Most of this material has been recorded over and over, and it would be easy to pick out anything seriously lacking. The good news is that this new ACT English language version completely measures up. Charlotte Cohn as Lillian Holiday is excellent; all the other voices and orchestrations are just right too.

The 2006 American Conservatory Theatre production of Happy End had all the bite that their version of Threepenny Opera lacked a couple of seasons before. (That effort was fluffy and rather defanged, with an English translation that felt G-rated in contrast to the well-known Blitzstein version.) ACT's Happy End was visually splendid and a lot of effort, craft and clowning went into it. Too bad the entire show was apparently not recorded for release on DVD.

If you are reading this review stop now and click the buy button immediately. This is the best Weill "show" recording to come out in a long time. Happy End, which has been always described as that "difficult" sequel to The ThreePenny Opera is shown here to be a vital and vibrant piece of Musical Theater. This CD should be in every Weill enthusiasts collection. In fact everyone interested in the Musical theater should buy it now. I liked it. Can you tell?

Finally an English-language version of this classic Brecht-Weill work and A.C.T.'s production delivers the goods, particularly the stunning and beautiful soprano of Charlotte Cohn as "Halellujah Lil" who gets to tackle the show's most famous numbers. Cohn's 'Sailor's Tango' is gorgeous and haunting and her rendition of 'Surabaya Johnny' soars: dynamic and beautiful. Definitely an album worth owning!

I really enjoyed this recording. The performances are fine and the overall sound quality good.

Excellent recording and cast - from California, of course! A must for Becht - Weill fans...

Fourpenny Opera
By Janos Gereben [2006]

Following the great success of their "Threepenny Opera" in Berlin, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht were forced to put up with each other again, and in 1929, "Happy End" was born... a stepchild-to-be, suppressed by the ascending Nazis, ignored by audiences.

In this country, decades later, Michael Feingold managed to resuscitate this vehicle for the magic "Bilbao Song," "The Sailors' Tango," "The Mandalay Song," and the guaranteed showstopper "Surabaya Johnny." In San Francisco, Carey Perloff's American Conservatory Theater followed up an excellent production of "Threepenny Opera" in 2000 with a stylish, fun premiere of "Happy End" in the Geary Theater tonight.

This "Melodrama with Songs" has a paper-thin story, of Chicago gangsters and Salvation Army molls, a faint echo of Shaw's 1905 "Major Barbara," but the music is something else, well described by Perloff as "sexy, dangerous, surprising, inventive, and filled with sudden bursts of jazz, tango, foxtrot..."

Perloff, with her special touch for music drama (from musicals to opera), pulled together a cast of mostly "straight actors," who somehow manage to sing and dance up a storm (aided by amplification, alas), under the care of music director Constantine Kitsopoulos and choreographer John Carrafa.

Just as Perloff belongs in an opera house, Walt Spangler's spectacular multi-functional unit set should make a major opera company proud. With huge, gleaming metal trusses and a full-length staircase, the play's two settings (Bill's Beer Hall and the Salvation Army Mission) inhabit the same space as the staircase is moved from one location to another - similar to the Bayreuth "Flying Dutchman" where the same structure served, convincingly, as the harbor and the inside of Senta's home.

It's fortunate that the male lead doesn't have a big musical number because Peter Macon - scary-good that he is in the role of Bill Cracker - is not much of a crooner. His love interest (so to speak), Lieutenant Lillian of the Salvation Army, has all the singin'. Charlotte Cohn, the Musetta from the "Broadway Boheme," put her all into "The Sailors' Tango" and "Surabaya Johnny." Outstanding singing - different in its professional, perhaps excessively singerly quality - came from Linda Mugleston, in the role of The Fly, the mysterious Lady in Grey, running the gang. Extra material, in form of "The Ballad of the Pirates," from Weill's 1928 "Die Muschel von Margate," was interpolated into the show to give Mugleston her "entrance aria," and she made the most of it.

The large ensemble cast features some of the top A.C.T. regulars, including René Augesen, Steven Anthony Jones, Charles Dean, and Dan Hiatt. It was a special pleasure to see Jack Willis, back for the first time since his star turn in "The Black Rider," as Sam Wurlitzer, the "Mammy" of the gang, in an appropriate, very large frock. Human turbine Justin Leath, from the A.C.T. master of fine arts program, class of 2007, paired up beautifully with Willis as "Baby Face."

Perloff's direction is functional and effective, as usual - especially appealing in not calling attention to the Director and the act of Directing - but opening night didn't go as smoothly as this production is likely to appear in the future. Cohesion and fluidity were not always present; there were many tiny pauses in the text and movement, not enough to create a problem, but it was noticeable nevertheless.

The big-show finale made the audience forget whatever misgivings there might have been before. Perfectly manic or, rather, maniacally perfect, this was a memorable Broadway moment, everybody in motion, as the "Hosannah" chorus rings out:
"Praise to the Fords and Rockefellers - Hosannah!
The buyers and the sellers - Hosannah!
All power to the great - Hosannah!
Give them to the city and the state - Hosannah!"