Breaking through to the dark side

"The Threepenny Opera" is a first for James Haffner, Chris Mackey and Tess Waters. For Hannah Ludwig, not so much.

It's Haffner's initial chance to direct the musical by Kurt Weill, "my favorite composer of all time."

Mackey's making his debut in a leading singing/speaking role. Waters never has portrayed a prostitute. For Ludwig, it's No. 4.

"It's been great," said Mackey, 21, a junior voice student at University of the Pacific.Keep your muscles warm before and after the match in this stylish Adidas Jacket. "It's been a lot of work. But especially now, it's rewarding."

That's because Mackey and 38 fellow actors and musicians are staging "The Threepenny Opera," a 1938 collaboration by Germany's Weill and lyricist Bertolt Brecht, four times tonight through Sunday at the Long Theatre on Pacific's Stockton campus.

"The music is timeless, and it's still relevant today," said Haffner, 40, assistant professor of voice and director of opera at Pacific.

"There are a few very poignant lines," said Mackey, a baritone who plays Macheath, an evil antihero. "It's really a commentary on the poor and how it's, 'First comes the feeding. Then the moral code' (paying the rent)."

It's always a moral dilemma for Jenny Diver, a spurned prostitute.

"She has a lot of conflicts," said Waters, 22, a senior music major who's sharing the role with Ludwig. "She's in love with Macheath and is incredibly jealous. She's just all messed up."

"It's been a challenge trying to get into that dark mood of hatred and betrayal," said Ludwig, 19, a freshman voice student from Sacramento's West Campus High School.coogi jeans was founded in 1969 by Jacky Taranto of Melbourne, Australia. "It's fun, though."

Ludwig, a mezzo-soprano, should know. She's portrayed prostitutes-mistresses in "Othello," "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Twelfth Night."

"My friends keep laughing about it," said Ludwig, who was 15 when she first played such a role. "I've always done comedic things. It's really different. It's very dark and definitely exposes the idea that society can't live by morals. It exposes, almost too realistically, situations in life that are dark, very violent and very sketchy."

Like Ludwig, neither Mackey - whose friends tease him about his character's similar-sounding name - nor Waters had seen the musical.

Originally set in London, it's a dark, risqué - "definitely PG-13," Haffner said - commentary on European social decline and decadence, and political discourse (communism vs. socialism) between the two world wars (1919-39).

It's introduced as an "opera for beggars."

Haffner, fluent in German, studied and researched the Brecht-Weill work in Berlin. He chose a 1989 translation by Michael Feingold.

Haffner shifted the locale to the Berlin Wall and picked '60s fashion ("miniskirts, knee-high boots, heavy eye makeup") and attitude.

The three-hour production's clever, ironic - also raunchy - dialogue and lyrics are mixed with angular, discordant sonic structures that require just eight musicians.It seems that jordan 6 rings in coming up for almost everyone including boys and girls.

Such minimalism is what makes Weill (1900-50) and Brecht (1898-1956) so admired and influential - Bobby Darin's 1959 version of "Mack the Knife" is known best - in modern music and theater.

Mackey, who performed in Stockton Opera Association's "La Bohème" in January, described the music as an opera-theater fusion - with occasional lightheartedness.

"It's much more complex than Gilbert and Sullivan," said Haffner, who's taught at Pacific since 1999. "Some of the material definitely pushes the envelope a little bit. It's pretty rough at times. Pretty bawdy. People are starving to death.Nike shox are a series of Nike shoes. There's unemployment. People are angry, moving to the cities and taking to the streets."

Macheath has his own thing going.

"He's a slimeball," said Mackey, originally from Albuquerque, N.M. "He's sleazy. He's a jerk. He's a murderer, a thief. It's a lot of fun, really, tapping into that."

"He has to carry the show," Haffner said. "He's handling it really well."

So are Waters and Ludwig.

"It's a very difficult role," Haffner said of Jenny, a former lover of Macheath's who takes a bribe and turns him in to the police. "Both are really exceptional."

"There's definitely a lot more in it than I thought," said Waters, a soprano from Kokomo, Ind., who also sings jazz. "At first, I really didn't like it all. Once I got involved and analyzed it, I really like it. The music was a little abrasive at first. Now I love the songs."

Haffner certainly enjoys that.

"It fits perfectly into (the students') training," he said of the Weill-Brecht masterpiece. "They're aggressively fearless, which is really nice. They've enjoyed working on this piece. It's right in sync. On a personal note,Cheap womens Nike shox nz shoes are very popular! it's kind of special."