Brecht at Liederkranz

Friday night, my vocal coach, Peggy Atkinson, directed this production of Brecht’s Seven Deadly Sins and Mahagonny that was staged this weekend at Liederkranz . [Coincidently, the site where I took acting lessons from a Method acting teacher and student of Lee Strasberg in the 1980s. Imagine a grade-schooler doing The Method . ]

New York is a city that is incredibly rich in culture of all kinds at all price points and appreciation levels. Friday night was a small production to mainly an audience of Liederkranz members and friends of the actors, most of whom were recent Juilliard grads.

My brief review: I had no expectations and I wasn’t disappointed. It was fun, not a dreary and laborious as Brecht can get. Some of the “dancing” was stilted; some of the singing was good; some of the acting/singing was too earnest [read: hard to watch]. But I was glad to see it and to support Pegs. [I had seen last season’s nominated Threepenny at Studio 54 last season and wasn’t enraptured. And I wasn’t alone: the audience actually sighed had a collective yawn at intermission. Perhaps I’m not a Brecht fan, I haven’t seen enough to make an informed decision yet].

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