Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill: A Musical Voyage

I forgot our mid-year anniversary. It was August when my girlfriend Moana and I first got together, but for some reason, we (she) always celebrate the half-year anniversaries too, despite its proximity to Valentine’s Day. I forgot it, and so I recently found myself buying her flowers, stuffed things and tickets to as many plays as I could manage. First stop on the Make-up Express? Berlin. Well, Broadway, via Berlin.

As a composer, Kurt Weill is one of the most important theatrical figures in the last century. His vision of music and the theatre helped to form the modern musical. The forty back-to-back songs of Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill: A Musical Voyage, all composed by Weill for various productions, are interspersed with narration from the actors and take the audience on a journey from Weill’s work with Bertolt Brecht in Germany, to his escape from the Nazis to France in 1933, and his emigration to America in 1935. The cast does a wonderful job capturing the contrasting zeitgeists of the moody, sultry Berlin cabarets of pre-Nazi Germany at the top of the show, and the optimism of post-war United States at the end.

Weill’s musical career is sped through chronologically, and the performers execute the songs with remarkable accuracy and energy. While the immense presence of twelve actors and an orchestra on the Cazalet Theatre stage is one of the most attractive features of the show, it also overwhelms the solo numbers, which are mostly less successful as a result. Aimee Ambroziak’s performance of Surabaya Johnny is a notable exception to this though, and is a fine example of the difference between singing a song well, which every soloist here accomplishes, and truly occupying the emotional space of the song. Hers is one of the most moving and memorable moments of the evening. Another exception was Kelly Rigole’s flirty, sassy, and funny performance of “That’s Him.” Rigole clearly has a talent for this sort of broad comedy and adds much color to the ensemble.

Exceptional performances not withstanding, one of the triumphs of the show is that the real star remains Kurt Weill. Berlin to Broadway serves to showcase the prolificness of an important composer whose works- outside of songs like “Alabama Song,” which The Doors covered, and “Mack the Knife”- are often unknown, even to theatre aficionados like my girlfriend. The only thing I knew about him was that he was Brecht’s boyfriend. (As it turns out, that statement is probably not true, and stating it publicly can get you scoffed at by theatre aficionados like my girlfriend and her aficionado comrades.)

Weill’s songs frequently contain raw social commentary that is covered by an ironically cheery overcoat just thick enough to point at the hypocrisy of the society that allows and even enjoys such iniquities. Director Nancy Helms applies such a glossy overcoat to perfection in her staging of the Threepenny Opera song “Mack the Knife,” where the tone gradually slides from fearful to joyously showy. By the end of the number, the entire ensemble is in quasi-Broadway chorus line mode, all jazz hands and grins. This is heavy stuff for a song about a serial killer. The banjo in the orchestra is a particularly inspired, bold choice that lends itself well to the too-cheery atmosphere, as do the women’s fancy-coat-over-negligee costumes.

More of that hypocrisy is displayed in Ambroziak and Caitlyn Milot’s hilarious duet, “Lullaby,” wherein two women pushing a baby carriage gush about a sensational murder in great gory detail, and attempt to gain access to the crime scene, all the while trying to lull their baby to sleep.

I’d easily recommend this show to anyone, but I don’t need to; the entire run is already sold out. The show ends with “Love Song” and the assertion that every ending should be a happy one, which seems like sound advice to me.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Moana.

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