Die Dreigroschenoper

Yeah… that’s German.  But Friday night we saw a production in Russian of this play by a German set in London.  Yeah… it hurt our brains too.  But the day started out as all our days do – with classes.  Half of us had individual coaching with Marina – our whirlwind of a voice teacher.  She got way behind so we ended up having to stay late, but the time she spent with me was really fun.  We hardly even needed the interpreter.  We just kind of screeched at each other in Soprano-ese until we got the sounds we wanted.  After we worked through “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” she added “Misty” to my work load, which should be fun.  The afternoon brought us another acting class, and a grouchy group of us for some reason.  Our training for the day relied on us all having memorized a portion of “To be or not to be,” but it became rapidly apparent that not everyone had.  So we failed at that exercise.  We don’t like to fail, but apparently we don’t always like to rehearse either.  So there you go.  Anyway, we had to start doing our animal etudes today, and I was trying to hang back so that mine would be put off to next week since my ankle is giving me so much trouble, but after the first few etudes, no one else was willing to go!  So I got up to be a squirrel (and to prevent us from looking like a bunch of slackers).  Unfortunately, squirrels have stronger ankles than I do, and I definitely made the whole ankle situation worse with what I did.  Sergei was very kind, however, applauding me for taking one for the team.  He also commented on the stupidity of my squirrel – which we both agreed was a realistic characteristic. So after grouchiness and not-so-great etudes and not-so-great exercises and not-so-great motivation, half of us met up to go see Трехрошовая Опера (Threepenny Opera) at the MXAT.  I have to say, I really enjoyed the hell out of this show.  It was three acts, almost four hours… but somehow it didn’t feel as long as some of the two hour shows we have seen thus far.  The men who played Trigorin and Sorin in the Seagull that we saw played Mack and Peacham in this production… and man were they good.  This Trigorin/Mack fellow is all kinds of sexy.  And the production was extremely well constructed.  The end was a giant piece of spectacle that didn’t end up making a whole lot of sense, but it was pretty darn impressive.  It’s not every day you see a ginormous human/horse/dragon skeleton puppet in hell, now is it? Doppleganger Update – Russian Craig(e) Holcombe was in front of me in line at the cafeteria this evening, and Russian Sonya Thompson was in the audience at Threepenny.  And I’m pretty sure the  main chorus for Threepenny was the Russian equivalent of 1957 Diva Heaven – probably Cheryl, Debra (two hot blondes in evening gowns) and Rick and Will (two smooth dudes in tuxes).  Though I will say… aside from opening with “Mack the Knife,” I would say the doppelganger ends there.