Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Two's Company

Despite her earthy, magnetic stage personality, German chanteuse-actress-muse Lotte Lenya wasn’t particularly pretty. She liked to relate how her nearsighted husband — The Threepenny Opera composer Kurt Weill (pictured) — proposed just hours after losing his thick lenses in a lake while they were boating. Asked afterward if he would have married her with clear vision, Weill purportedly peered at her closely and said, “ I think so.” What inspired Weill’s blind devotion — and made the pair into artistic legends? See and hear for yourself at the Wordstage Vermont production Speak Low: The Music and Words of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. Based on letters and diaries, the show spans the couple’s unorthodox marriage and flight from war-torn Berlin to Broadway. Along the way, four versatile performers interpret nearly 20 Weill tunes, from “Mack the Knife” to “That’s Him.”