Word: gays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Vain Hope. At 9:44 a.m. all was gay chatter aboard the Rangoon-Prome Express. At 9:45 an earth-shattering explosion, followed in quick succession by two more, picked up long sections of the track and shook the cars in the air like wet laundry. Gunfire poured from the trackside paddyfields and jungle as two cars of the train plowed into the disabled engine ahead. Other cars of the long train overturned in a nightmare of confusion, as tumbled, screaming passengers were impaled on splinters or crushed in the press of twisted steel...
This was the story that Weill and Brecht turned into the despairing "Threepenny Opera," which showed the poor as helpless victims of the rich. The Drama Festival's production, while it retains the bawdy cynicism of the original, blunts the social satire; thus where Gay wrote "A woman knows how to be mercenary though she has never been to Court or the Palace," Richard Baldridge's adptation has it, "A woman knows how to be mercenary--it is in her nature." The all-over effect has been to turn the opera into a musical comedy, an eighteenth century "Guys...
...musical comedy "The Beggar's Opera" is incomparable. Gay, unhindered by copyright laws, set his verses to popular songs--folk songs today--and the airs of Purcell and Handel himself. Daniel Pinkham of the Festival has followed in this tradition by rummaging through Handel and plucking out a few gems that Gay missed, including the rousing anthem "See the Conquering Hero Comes." His orchestrations, while essentially true to the baroque originals, reinforce these delicate songs without intruding on their simplicity; the flute and string accompaniment of "Youth's the Season" was especially graceful...
...conceive of the role's ever having been played any better. Jack Cassidy, a bold and dashing Macheath, lacks the noble voice of Miss Jones, but sings most pleasingly. George Irving triumphs as scheming Mr. Peachum; both in his comedy bits and arias he is Peachum as Gay must have envisioned him. Zamah Cunningham as his wife, however, speaks her lines as if she were all too conscious of their comic intent. Jeanne Beauvais displayed a lovely voice as Lucy Lockit, and Sorrel Booke was properly ingratiating as the Beggar Poet...
...crowd of most-authentic cut-throats and trollops completed the assemblage, and at the conclusion one was very sensible of the fact that it is a dull and commonplace world we live in, despite our atoms, and that, failing to have known John Gay's London, we must count ourselves lucky to have his opera...