Salvation in a Gin Mill

By T.E. Kalem

Bertolt Brecht sought refuge in the U.S. in 1941 and went to Hollywood "to join the market where lies are bought." Happy End, a musical written in 1929, resembles nothing so much as an oldtime, screwball gangster movie. A rollicking revival staged recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music has now been admirably transferred to Broadway's Martin Beck Theater.

The setting is purportedly Chicago, though all of Brecht's locales are exercises in exotic fantasy. The action is centered in Bill Cracker's gin mill. Bill (Christopher Lloyd) is very tough but no match for the Lady in Gray, otherwise known as "the Fly" (Grayson Hall). She masterminds a gang of bank-robbing thugs with monikers like "the Reverend" (John A. Coe), "the Professor" (Robert Weil) and "Mammy" (Benjamin Rayson). They are all kept in line by Dr. Nakamura (Tony Azito), a Fu Manchu look-alike who speaks only in sibilants. Enter a Salvation Army lassie, "Hallelujah Lil" (Meryl Streep), who falls for Bill. After that, romance vies with comic havoc.

No Agitprop. The players invest the slapdash plot with wit and perfect timing. Wheeling on crutches necessitated by a recent stage fall, Lloyd's Bill has a saturnine piratical mien worthy of Long John Silver. Though slightly reedy of voice, Meryl Streep renders the Brecht lines with impeccable intelligence. The marvel of the evening is the Kurt Weill score, arguably superior to that of The Threepenny Opera.

Not only were the famous Bilbao Song and "Surabaya Johnny written for this musical, but also half a dozen other numbers of rare distinction. Weill creates a dramatic internal rhetoric by alternating abrasive, staccato jazz-tempo passages with languorous melodies of rich and striking beauty.

One word of joyous warning. In Happy End, Brecht has dropped agitprop. The show has no redeeming social value save delight.

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