What’s on Jim’s Mind (Issue #194)

Patricia Carlson, Marvin Carlson, and myself at last year’s Irondale Gala

The lull between the taping of our respective interviews for the new documentary Peter DiMario is making about Irondale offered Terry and me a good opportunity to catch up with our old friend Marvin Carlson.

As it often does with Marvin, the conversation soon turned to German Theatre. When Barbara and I started making our annual trip to Berlin in search of new adventures (someone told us Berlin theatre is perhaps the best in the world. Whoever told us that, maybe it was Marvin, was right). However, Vienna can give it a run for its money on any given night. And don’t worry if you don’t sprichst Deutsch. The German acting is so physical and specific that even if you only know a smattering of the plot, you will be fine and have an amazing time.) If you want a great book on the subject, read Marvin’s Theatre Is More Beautiful Than War or his memoir 10,000 Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatergoing. You’ll have a truly good time with either one of them.

Last Monday, though, he was most enthusiastic about a Threepenny Opera he had just seen on his most recent trip. The play ended almost ten minutes early, immediately following Macheath having sung The Ballade in Which Macheath Begs All Men for Forgiveness while standing on the top of the gallows steps, awaiting his death. Blackout; The End.

Or so the audience thought. Seeing that it is a common custom in the German theatre to make such drastic incisions, the audience applauded, unsure whether there would be a curtain call.

A sidebar here: I was once chatting with the playwright Michael Frayn following an interview he had given at the SUNY Graduate Center. I was complimenting him about a production of his play Democracy that Barbara and I had just seen at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin in which several American doo-wop songs from the 50s had been inserted into the play performed in character (East German bureaucratic functionaries), as musical interludes. Perhaps you had to see it to believe it, but in the course of the evening, it made perfect sense.

“Yes,” Michael replied. “I met someone on the street in Berlin who told me he was one of the bureaucrats. He told me that they had added quite a few songs. I replied that it must have made for a very long evening. “Oh no,” he said, “We just cut an hour or so of the text.”’ Michael went on to say that he had asked his agent about it.

“And…” He went on to end his story on a somewhat wry note. “He encouraged me not to see it.”

But back to Marvin’s recent Threepenny Opera experience.

The curtain finally rose, and the actors came out for the curtain call. Then the call stopped, brought to a halt for a discussion among the cast.

“This is a terrible ending. We need the arrival of the messenger on horseback, the messenger from the Queen. We need “I bring a special order from our beloved queen to have captain Macheath set at liberty forthwith (all cheer).”

“But that’s not a truthful ending!”

“It comes out of nowhere!”

“What if we just allude to the ending?”

“How!”

“We restore the original ending, but we undercut it. Instead of a full-size beautiful number, the messenger arrives alone in an ill-fitting suit with a small, shabby stuffed toy horse that he carries under his arm. Then he sings the finale solo and acapella. This way, we undercut the false ending and send the audience home with a greater undercutting of the moment’s innate untruthfulness!”

“Yes!”

The scene is restored to Mac alone on the gallows. The messenger entered and sang alone, like the bureaucratic functionary he is:

“I bring a special order from our beloved queen to have Captain Macheath set at liberty forthwith.” But there were no cheers.

“This is worse than not doing it at all!”

“There is only one answer.”

“What?”

“Perform it as written. That is what everyone wants. That is what we really want!”

And suddenly, the stage filled with a chorus of sixty, more people than were ever on stage the entire evening, all in glorious costumes, under brilliant lighting. All singing The Third Act Finale beautifully.

(And you can hear it yourself by pushing the button at the bottom.)

This letter was supposed to be a serious, perhaps pedantic, semi-rant about the importance of truth in the creation of art.

But sometimes, as Sabina says near the end of The Skin of Our Teeth: “I’ve got to go to the movies.”

Me too.

– Jim Niesen

Write to me directly at jim@irondale.org

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