The Threepenny Opera: Imaad Shah debuts with Bertolt Brecht's musical

Imaad Shah makes a brave directorial debut with Brecht's wildly popular, widely performed The Threepenny Opera

Within five years of its opening performance on August 31, 1928, in Berlin, Bertolt Brecht and Elizabeth Hauptmann’s The Threepenny Opera had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages. Over the decades, it has been staged in many countries outside Europe, as well as adapted for the screen.

So, for 31-year-old Imaad Shah to choose this iconic musical as his directorial debut on stage was an act of courage, to say the least. The son of theatre stalwarts Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah, Imaad agrees, “I definitely was under a fair bit of pressure as it is a legendary text — [it was] a bit like diving into the deep end, to start with. But I’ve felt very strongly about this play for quite a while and felt very closely connected to its music.” 

Brecht used songs to interrupt and comment, forcing viewers to concentrate on their content, and this suited the musician in Imaad perfectly. “The scenes flow into the songs, sometimes the songs interrupt the scenes — I would like to think Brecht would have been proud of our production,” says the young singer and songwriter who took the liberty to adapt some of the lyrics to highlight the socialist agenda of the play, which was staged in Mumbai at Aadyam, an Aditya Birla theatre initiative. 

“The play’s cynical yet energetic way of talking about the extremely rich and the extremely poor, about the police and lawmakers, about morality and the question of what is a criminal, all speak of things very close to home,” he adds.

Set in Victorian times, in London, The Threepenny Opera looks at poverty, riches and crime through an unconventional moral lens. “You have to kill your neighbour to survive! /It’s violence that keeps a human alive! … Food is the first thing, morals follow on,” sings a character, clearly voicing Brecht’s philosophy. Preachers are urged to “First feed the face, and then talk Right and Wrong,” in keeping with the belief that morality is irrelevant when there is hunger in the belly.

Opening with a hilarious scene of a beggars’ firm, professionally run by the Peachum family, the musical straightaway has you know that traditional means of earning a living will have no takers here. The Peachums, who market “basic types of human misery”, rent out beggars’ clothes and issue licences to allow begging in their demarcated territory. There’s a one-armed man, a wounded soldier, a blind man (“the cordon bleu”), and so on. Mr Peachum’s (fleshed out by the totally-in-command Bugs Bhargava Krishna) market survey tells him that these are the types of misery that make people part with their money easily, and he uses this knowledge to unscrupulous effect.

Another gang of crooks headed by the ruthless, Bible-quoting Macheath, played seductively by Arunoday Singh, uses more conventional methods of crime to mint money. Arson, looting, murders, womanising are all legit in their vocabulary. With a protective figure in the sheriff of London (enacted by Joy Fernandes) who has been Macheath’s friend from the days they fought in colonial wars, Macheath has a free run of the city — till he seduces young Polly Peachum, played delightfully by Saba Azad, niece of the late Safdar Hashmi. Thereafter, the musical follows an amusing, simple story of Peachum versus Macheath, punctuated with profound, amoral lyrics and marvellously choreographed dances. Finally, all ends well.

Quoting Brecht’s original tagline for the play — “a criminal is a bourgeois and a bourgeois is a criminal” — Imaad says the world hasn’t changed much since Victorian times. “In a world where corruption is the code, where governments are bribed with millions to pass arms deals, where famous and celebrated people live tax-free lives, using the modus operandi of drug lords and dictators, where globalisation means sharing the world’s resources among the powerful nations, the characters of the play become symbols of more than just themselves,” he points out.

Imaad’s production is a tour de force of drama. All the performers have a clear diction, loud ringing voices and nimble feet that make them a pleasure to watch and hear. The colourful costumes, the innovative set, appropriate lighting, skilled sound design and robust music recreate the milieu of London’s underbelly in the 19th century most effectively, transporting viewers to another time and another place in a fascinating manner, and prodding them to do a rethink about what is right and wrong.

The Threepenny Opera will be staged at Jamshed Bhabha Theatre at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) on December 9 (7.30 pm) and December 10 (4 pm and 7.30 pm). It will later be performed at Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi (dates to be announced)