TV REVIEWS : Ute Lemper Brings Intensity and Variety to Kurt Weill Songs

Scheduled for 4 and 10:30 p.m. today on Bravo cable, “Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill” offers a mediocre transcription of a forceful stage performance garnished with interview segments and vintage film clips.

Shot at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 1989 (eight months before Lemper presented the same program at the Westwood Playhouse), the hourlong telecast concentrates on Weill’s German theater music, with only two examples each of his French and American songs.

Lemper brings intelligence, intensity and vocal variety to excerpts from the early social operas Weill created in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and others, with subtitles clarifying her often daring expressive choices. For instance, where others approach “The Barbara Song” ruefully, as an ironic souvenir of the death of innocence, Lemper makes it into a triumphant recollection of awakening to love.

Bitter wisdom is mostly the order of the day here, however, whether Lemper is prowling for booze, pretty boys and dollars in a Mahagonny whiskey bar or periodically cooing about the color of the sea as she describes a fatal shipwreck near Rangoon.

After exquisite interpretations of French material (including the mock-sentimental “Youkali”), Lemper offers misconceived renditions of Broadway-era Weill: “My Ship” as it might sound in a lieder recital and a musically distorted, expressively shapeless “Saga of Jenny.” Jurgen Knieper provides artful accompaniments throughout the program.

Director Tony Staveacre favors disorienting switches between extreme longshots and extreme closeups--the latter often from unflattering angles. His use of black-and-white footage of German streets and shop windows proves no more persuasive--though at least it takes you out of the Theatre Royal momentarily. The brief interview statements and some of Lemper’s onstage comments will help those unfamiliar with Weill understand his importance--and why a singer still in her 20s might champion his music.

Lemper appears Jan. 29 at the Wadsworth Theatre in a program of songs associated with Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich, with a new CD and video performance to follow.