Mary Testa To Join George Abud's 3PENNY OPERA Starring Katrina Lenk and More
The cast includes Katrina Lenk as Pirate Jenny, Barbara Walsh as Polly Peachum and more.
Off-Brand Opera has revealed the complete casting for George Abud's new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, with the score adaptation by Jake Landau. Abud's adaptation, commissioned by Off-Brand Opera, sets Threepenny in present day New York City against the backdrop of a Mayoral Inauguration. Themes of immigration abuse and class warfare burn beneath a vaudevillian veneer of riotous Brechtian comedy.
The full cast includes Tony Award Winner Katrina Lenk (Company) as Pirate Jenny, Tony Award nominee Barbara Walsh (Falsettos) as Polly Peachum, Tony Award nominee Mary Testa (Oklahoma!) as Lucy Brown, Drama Desk nominee George Abud (Lempicka) as Macheath, with Paula Gaudier as Pam/Young Polly, Mahira Kakkar as Tiger Brown, Anthime Miller as Pouty Petey, Berit Palma as Stuffy Stevie, Alexis Papaleo as Tummy Tommy, Joseph Pyfferoen as Peachum, Aline Salloum as Mrs. Peachum, and Nicola Vazquez as Krusti Kristi.
Director and Adaptor George Abud states, "In a time of mounting fascism and eroding free speech, the theatre must respond with radicalizing storytelling so vivid, so absorbing, and so immediate that one is activated to participate in their daily citizenship. Brecht created Threepenny Opera in a time of upheaval and moral rot to expose the dark figures manipulating our society from the shadows. We find ourselves in a scarily similar time to those same days a hundred years ago. There is no better template than Threepenny Opera, no better tool than Brecht's perspective-bending comedy, to explore the warning signs of a nation's decline, a nation that aches to be unified. Macheath is once again at hand, this time much more indelicate, much more out in the open, and seducing us ever so slowly with one last punchline."
Performances will take place January 15-25, 2026 at the Theatre at St. Jeans.
