After weeks of rain that interrupted rehearsals, conditions seemed perfect at the start of “The Counterfeit Opera” Wednesday on Little Island, with balmy temperatures and zero chance of precipitation. As members of the cast swarmed the stage shouting questions into the steeply raked rows of the amphitheater, conditions also seemed ripe for some political rabble-rousing.
After all, this show with a libretto by Kate Tarker and music by Dan Schlosberg was billed as a new take on John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera,” which punctured the cultural pretensions of 18th-century London and inspired Brecht’s darker indictment of social inequality in “The Threepenny Opera” (1928).
“Can you afford your rent?”
“No!” the audience shouted back.
“Can you afford health insurance?”
“No!”
“Can you afford to support a lawless, self-serving government of con men?”
This time, the “no” came out as a roar.
At that point, it almost seemed possible that a revolution might start up right here on this artificial island developed by the billionaire Barry Diller. But as the sun set, the heat drained out of the day and with it the performance. With toothless satire, goofy humor and an absence of memorable tunes, “The Counterfeit Opera” falls short of its wildly successful historical models.
The closing chorus — “Class wars repeat. Con men don’t sleep. Fight to break the dark spell of a world made of deceit!” — was met with mild-mannered applause and a version of a standing ovation that masks competition for the exits. The meteorological chance of political action breaking out was back to zero.
More unforgivably, perhaps, the piece fails to infuse the material with a distinct New York flavor. Aside from a few quips at the expense of Boston and New Jersey, this self-declared “Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter’s City” feels like it could unfold anywhere.
In Dustin Wills’s space-efficient direction, the story is told as a play put on by contemporary thieves who have pilfered a rack of costumes from the Met Opera. The setting of their play is the Five Points slum of Manhattan in 1855, roughly the area of today’s Civic Center. At the time, it was notorious for its tenements overstuffed with new immigrants and newly emancipated Black Americans, its high murder rate and frequent outbreaks of disease.
In Tarker’s book, the characters are largely the same grifters, con men and prostitutes that people Gay’s ballad opera. Here Macheath, played with a streak of cuddly melancholia by Damon Daunno, is a charismatic firefighter rumored to be the cause of some of the blazes he extinguishes. He has a chip on his shoulder about being Irish, the only allusion to ethnic struggles in this musical with a diverse cast playing seemingly generic working-class New Yorkers.
When Macheath marries Polly Peachum, rendered with squally emotions and vocals by Dorcas Leung, he incurs the wrath of her parents, who trade in stolen goods and are wary of losing their daughter’s cheap labor. Unbeknown to Polly, Macheath is also married to Lucy (the regally volcanic Zenzi Williams), the daughter of Lockit the jailer, played with velvety menace by Sola Fadiran. And Macheath finds time to make regular visits to the brothel where his ex-girlfriend Jenny (Lauren Patten in the standout performance of the evening) now works.
After Mr. Peachum (Vin Knight) and Lockit conspire to have Macheath thrown into jail, he briefly escapes with Lucy’s help but is captured once more and condemned to the gallows. But just then a providential fire breaks out and Macheath is freed, only to be shot out of revenge — or was it on commission from a shadowy plutocrat? — by Jenny.
Aside from a brief allusion to Kurt Weill’s Act II finale and one quotation from Johann Pepusch’s 1728 music, Schlosberg’s score weaves in original songs drawing on pop, rock, jazz and cabaret styles. Dramatically effective and competently sung by the cast, these numbers never quite rose to the level of Pepusch’s and Weill’s catchy tunes, which pickpocketed their way into the public imagination of their times.
Schlosberg’s most affecting music colors the brothel visit in which Macheath is first seduced and then sold out to his persecutors, a scene that also sees Tarker flesh out her characters with some psycho-social nuance. An entertaining touch was having each wife try to poison the other in their duet dueling over the absent Macheath. But the extra attention paid to the experience of women ultimately watered down the social satire. In the end, it seemed that this Macheath fell victim not to the social inequalities of a rapacious capitalist society but to his own caddish behavior.
The Counterfeit Opera
Through Sunday at Little Island.
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