Word: peachum
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...Vries' new hero needs more than fruit. Ted Peachum is a budding aesthete and furniture mover in Pocock, Ill. He is also a parody of that familiar species, the small-town boy with big ideas and an ambition to rise above his station. Who can blame him? His father rereads comic books and hibernates like a bear, his aunt is known chiefly for canceling subscriptions and returning unused portions, and his grandfather contracted a venereal disease at a health...
...Peachum cannot flee this bunch fast enough; yet, pity the smug chuckler who patronizes this family: "You New York-Dutch-descended, probably wrong-Strauss-loving officer of some music society or civic uplift group," he snaps. "I'd like a peek at some of your Rorschachs, you old sofa-crack feeler, you. Slipping a palm furtively under cushions and into crevices as you fish for coins in other people's chairs in a fashion whose psychological symbolism is all too readily apparent, you cranny rummager, you wrong-Scarlatti admirer. You secretary-treasurer...
...Pocock is bound to attract the attention of Mrs. d'Amboise, a sculptor "who like all women of quality chewed her gum with her front teeth and rarely popped it within earshot of people with known academic degrees or season subscription boxes to the Opera." At 16, Peachum becomes Mrs. d'Amboise's model and a suitable future suitor for her ten-year-old daughter Columbine...
...Peachum still has higher things on his mind: existential dread, for instance. "When they brought the news to me that another bunch at Oxford had scrapped Causality, I stretched out with an icebag on my head. Then it was all random. Certainty was a gone goose, and the soul with it. The soul was a clinker, cold as the meteorites that fell on Toulouse, Knyahinya and, if memory served, Pultusk and Mocs. Man has no purpose...
CLIFFORD WOODWORTH as Mr. Peachum seems to understand Brecht better, and his operatic voice adds to his performance. It was a shame to see him have to glance up at the conductor (Paul D. Lehrman) in confusion as the musical ensemble fell apart during the finale to Act I. From the opening bars of the overture, Lehrman takes the score at a gallop. He doesn't give the music the time it needs to fester, to spread its fumes; more importantly, the singers couldn't keep up with the pace. (If you want to hear Weill's music...