HGSP Switches: 'Mack the Knife' Over Joy, Rapture

Harvard's Gilbert and Sullivan Players will depart from their traditional fare to produce in April The Threepenny Opera, by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

The production initiates an effort to expand HGSP into a musical theatre group concentrating on, but not limited to, the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.

"There is a real need for a centralized musical organization on the campus," said Timothy S. Mayer '66, president of HGSP and director of both The Three-penny Opera and of HGSP's last production, Utopia Limited. "HGSP is the only dramatic group on campus with sufficient human and physical resources to undertake a broad program of musical theatre."

He added that HGSP had, at the present time, no intention of including either Broadway productions or chamber music in its repertoire. "Our move," he said, "is meant in no way to cramp the style of Grant-in-Aid, the Hasty Pudding Show, of the House musicals."

Written by Brecht and set to music by Weill when both were young artists, The Threepenny Opera was first produced in Berlin in 1928. It depicts the chaotic existence fostered by the tottering Welmar Republic. The riots which the production provoked led to its suspension by the Nazis, and jeopardized the security of its authors, both of whom were later forced to flee Germany.

Mayer cited the Opera as "the most important and most delightful piece of musical theatre of the twentieth century." HGSP's choice was influenced, also, by the fact that the Opera is ideally suited for the Agassiz stage, and by the challenge which this work presents to a group accustomed to performing Gilbert and Sullivan.

The Threepenny Opera, which will open April 22, was also selected to complement the Adams House March production of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, on which it was based.

Mayer plans to hold auditions for both cast and orchestra in the first weeks of the second semester.