Review of The Rise and Fall of Mahagony City – A big, brash play on Brecht and Weil’s whiskey-soaked dystopia | English National Opera (ENO)

WWhat is the worst crime in Mahagony, the spiderweb city built by three cons in order to extract a living from stupid tourists? Not having any cash. ENO knows exactly what this predicament feels like. However, Jimmy Manton’s new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera somehow manages to make frugality a virtue, but it still feels substantive.

For starters, it’s big. In Brechtian style, the breadth and depth of the Colosseum are open: it feels as if it should be an immersive production, with the audience right there in the midst of the performers. Mila Clarke’s collection, centered around a huge container, reuses items ENO regulars will recognize from vintage, and the costumes look like spoils from a charity shop sweep – which suits the frivolous aesthetic.

It is uneven – but so is the opera itself. There are long stretches in this story of exploitation and greed, set in an American desert dystopia. She first arrived on stage in Berlin in 1930, and you could say the feeling in the world now isn’t all that different, but Manton offers us no parallels or clear references between Trump and Vance. The joke is more on us. These goofy tourists, initially dressed in office clothes and making their debut like extra members of the audience, lined the aisles and stood in boxes.

There are bright touches, including a human megaphone that arrives to announce each scene, looking like a white-clad alien wearing a cone collar of the kind your cat gets tangled in after surgery. A tornado dances passive-aggressively before threatening the townspeople with his fancy warlike footwork.

Lizzi Gee’s choreography is also on display in some elegant numbers that involve treadmills as the characters move towards Mahagonny – including “Alabama Song,” made famous outside the opera house by David Bowie and The Doors, delivered here by Daniel De Nis. She benefited the most from the subtle amplification, bringing star quality to Jenny, a tart with less heart than you’d first think. Simon O’Neill makes all of Jimmy McIntyre’s lines sound like Wagner, and Elgan Lear-Thomas sings elegantly as Jack, even as he eats himself to death. Rosie Aldridge is Bigbeck’s formidable widow, cutting the whiskey with the liquid seeping from the tank next to the urinal. Jeremy Sams’s English translation is very sharp.

In his first appearance as ENO’s music director-designate – he will take over next year – Andre de Ridder keeps the orchestra active, but the stars are the chorus, on stage most of the time, who master wail’s difficult ensemble writing with a conviction that only a few opera company choirs around the world can match. They deserve more job security than they currently have.