No one can touch Lotte Lenya on "Pirate Jenny." Is it fair to compare other performances of the song to one of the original actors/collaborators the show was written for? Strangely enough, it is. Despite Lenya becoming known for being Bertolt Brecht's wife and muse (thereby making her a muse to composer Kurt Weill, as well), her original role in The Three Penny Opera was Jenny. It is Polly (originatde by Roma Bahn) who got to sing the original "Pirate Jenny." Lenya performed the mezzo-soprano role of Jenny, performing "Solomon Song" and "Tango-Ballad." But, of all the songs Lenya became known for and her wide variety of roles in international theater, her performance as Jenny in The Three-Penny Opera is the most iconic largely because of her "Pirate Jenny." The long-running 1956 revival changed the book of the show (far softer than the original language, perhaps even gentler) and reassigned many of the songs to different performers. Polly lost "Pirate Jenny" and "Barbara Song" to Jenny and Lucy (Bea Arthur, singing a soprano role as a tenor) and the show just flowed better.
Why is Lotte Lenya the true master of "Pirate Jenny?" Let's put this into perspective. Lotte Lenya is the only actor to ever win a competitive Tony Award for an off-Broadway performance. The rules were literally changed after she won to make sure only Broadway houses could host Tony-eligible shows. The same year she won, 1956, the commercially successful revival of The Threepenny Opera won a special Tony award for excellence in off-Broadway theater. That's an interesting anomaly.
There is additional context, of course. That revival happened at a time when off-Broadway theater was exploding. Shakespeare revivals were happening in tiny houses that sold out every night. Experimental productions were running for a few weeks at a time with fresh tenants every month at the playhouse. As the size and cost of a Broadway production continue to grow, artists and producers looked for smaller venues to house shows that cost a whole lot less.
The 1956 revival ran for 2707 performances. That's longer than all but the most successful Broadway shows in history. Only the original run of The Fantasticks has ever surpassed that level of success off-Broadway (42 years and 17162 performances to be exact). Do you know how many theater artists would kill to have a run that long in 2014? Most of them.
Lotte Lenya is not afraid of the darkness of the song. It is a revenge fantasy, imagining the simple barmaid at a hotel as the mastermind of a vicious fleet of pirates. When her ship finally returns home and raises the black flag, she gets to decide which men in the hotel live or die. You can guess which ending she chooses after hearing of the abuse they throw at her every day.
More shocking than the dark interpretation is the intentional decision to fall behind the orchestra. Rubato, slowing down a song for a moment to sell the emotional content and repaying the time later, isn't uncommon in theater; having a singer like Lenya fall so far behind the band so that she's still singing the verse when the chorus starts is, as far as I'm aware, only ever incorporated in this production of The Threepenny Opera. It's the literal manifestation of hate, revenge, and terror onstage.
This particular recording from a BBC Broadcast in 1962 adds a different context to the song. The camera pans out as Lenya walks past empty table after empty table in a never-ending barroom with no patrons. This Pirate Jenny has already committed the deed. No one slept in the beds that night, and no one will ever get to sleep in the beds again.
