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A11 The Well
A two-act revue of the composer's repertoire and
life graces a New York stage.
performers ro use microphones. With
he distance between the mov-
her creative team, she added the song
ing music of Kurt Weill's
"It Never Was You" to the script,
Broadway shows and the movement
which
presents parts of songs in
music of the percussion theater
French
and German as well as English.
great,
but
it's
piece Stomp May seem
The show has cast three singers
been traveled by Laura Heller.
— Lorinda Lisitza, Bjorn Olsson
Heller, who was the manager of
and Michael Winther — from the
Stomp for five years and came to
Off-Off-Broadway production by
Detroit to consult on the touring
Theatre
Ten Ten and adds Veronica
version, has taken on the title of
Mittenzwei.
The new staging is done
producer for Berlin to Broadway
by
Ten
Ten
director
Hal Simons.
with Kurt Weill, a two-act revue of
"Kurt
Weill's
music
is so intricate
the composer's repertoire and life.
and gorgeous, but I don't think a
The musical, staged at the Off-
lot of people are really aware of it,"
Broadway Triad Theater, keeps
says Heller. "I love being able to
Heller close to her favorite songs
now performed by four singers
and a pianist. First produced in
1972, the revue spans the entire
theater career of Weill — from
his days in Berlin with Bertolt
Brecht to his postwar Broadway
collaborations with Maxwell
Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Ogden
Nash, Langston Hughes and
Alan Jay Lerner.
The familiar songs include
"September Song," "Mack the
Knife," "My Ship," "Speak Low"
and "Lost in the Stars." Eric
Stern, who recently conducted a
Kurt Weill celebration at the
Appearing in "Berlin to Broadway with
Brooklyn Academy of Music, is
Kurt Weill" at New York's Triad Theater
musical director.
are Michael Winther, Lorinda Lisitza,
"When I was in high school, a
Kurt Weill album was my favorite, Veronica Mittenzwei and Bjorn Olsson.
and I listened to it every day,"
introduce people to the music.
explains Heller, who has been a
"The first New York production
general and company manager for
ran a year and a half, and that's
Off-Broadway and Broadway shows
when Off-Broadway shows did not
for 21 years.
run a year and a half. In 1985 in
"On Mother's Day this year, I
Los
Angeles, it ran for two years.
was on the Web and saw that it was
I'm
hoping
to beat both of those
being performed in a church base-
records.
I
have
touring rights, and if
ment, so I took my daughter and
it's popular in New York, we will
was thrilled to hear the music
definitely send out a company."
again. I was so overwhelmed by the
piece that I had to raise the money
— Suzanne Chessler
and get [the music] on stage.
"The next weekend I got two
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt
investor associate producer friends
Weill is beings performed at 8
and the person who books the Triad
p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 3
Theater to see the show, and by the
p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays
end of that performance, I raised half
at the Triad Theater, 158 W
N
the money and booked the theater."
72nd Street, New York City.
N
Heller picked a small space with
$45. (212) 279-4200.
153 seats because she didn't want the
T
difficulty wixh the Nazis," explains
Farneth, author of Kurt Weill: A Lift
in Pictures and Documents. "His par-
ents immigrated to Israel, where they
lived out the last years of their lives."
In 1949, Weill took another turn
in his musical career. Collaborating
with librettist Maxwell Anderson, he
composed the music for Lost in the
Stars. Based on the Alan Paton novel
Cry, the Beloved Country, about racial
conflict in South Africa, Weill, a vic-
tim of German racial theories, made
no concessions to popular Broadway
tastes. He wrote a work for the mass
audience that moved back toward his
early works of opera, and in doing so
paved the way for composers like
Leonard Bernstein and musical plays
like West Side Story.
Shortly afterward, during the run
of Lost in the Stars, Weill was again
collaborating with Maxwell
Anderson, working on a musical
version of Huckleberry Finn,
when he suffered a fatal heart
attack. He was 50 years old.
Lenya, who continued work as
a singer and actress after his death
— her star turn in Weill's The
Threepenny Opera ran six years
Off-Broadway in the mid-1950s
— established the Kurt Weill
Foundation to assist people who
could extend the public's appreci-
ation of her late husband's work.
"Weill was an avid reader,
and we know that his favorite
TV show was Kukla, Fran and
011ie," Farneth says. "He liked
walking, swimming and living in the
country."
Toward the end of his life, Weill
characterized his artistic approach
for an interviewer.
"In retrospect, looking back on
many of my own compositions, I find
that I seem to react very strongly to
the suffering of underprivileged peo-
ple, of the oppressed, the persecuted,"
he said. "When my music involves
human suffering, it is, for better or
worse, pure Weill."
.
❑
❑
,OvJA
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Music from page 79
For information on the DIA pro-
gram, see the accompanying arti-
cle on page 79. For information
on the Wayne State University
concert — to be performed at 7
p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25, in the
Music Recital Hall, 412 Old
Main — call (313) 577-1795.