E-Mail This Article to a Friend Like clockwork? Company One brings Anthony Burgess’s novel to Boston BY LIZA WEISSTUCH

When Alex, our "faithful narrator" in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, needs a bit of a lift, he tosses on a Ludwig Van. When the Dresden Dolls go on tour, they travel in a vehicle they’ve dubbed "Ludwig Van." Amanda Palmer, the burlesque-y diva of the duo, will tell you that throughout high school, she played her vinyl copy of the soundtrack to the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film. Moreover, she’s been tinkering with Beethoven’s melodies on the piano since she was a kid. So when Company One asked her to record a score for its production of the dystopian nightmare, which opens next Thursday, it hardly mattered that the Dolls were wrapped up in a tight schedule of shooting videos and darting off to play in Paris and LA. Never mind the limited time in the recording studio: with a few riffs from some of Beethoven’s better-known symphonies and sonatas, Palmer set about improvising a melodic landscape for the sadistic sturm und drang.

"The idea was just to start from scratch and not try to create anything specific, just look at the project in the simplest way possible," she explains. "We know the tone of the piece, the fact that the material is dark. We knew we wanted a lot of dynamic. Then we just said, ‘Let’s take these themes and improvise, and be the Dresden Dolls.’ We tried not to overthink it. Brian and I already have a common language, and when it comes to something like this, as long as we’re working in our element, we can come up with great stuff on really short notice."

Music figures prominently into Burgess’s plot. The score in Kubrick’s film was composed by avant-garde synth pioneer Wendy Carlos, who was manipulating discordant bleeps and blitzes when electronic music was a mere novelty. But a lesser-known fact for all you droog devotees is that in 1990, when the Royal Shakespeare Company premiered Anthony Burgess’s own adaptation, A Clockwork Orange 2004, the action was accompanied by original music by U2’s the Edge and Bono.

A stage version of Alex’s sadistic binges and consequent reformation? As legend has it, Burgess wrote the script in response to Kubrick’s screenplay (which he was not pleased with). Kubrick hadn’t incorporated the novel’s final chapter, in which Alex’s philosophical reflections negate all that came before. This chapter didn’t appear in the American publication of the book, and Kubrick apparently didn’t find out about it until he’d finished his screenplay. According to Shawn LaCount, who’s directing for Company One, Burgess’s script pared down the dialogue. Company One wanted to incorporate as much of that dialogue as possible without sounding preachy, so it’s gone in and bulked Burgess’s version up.

When it came to the music, the Dolls seemed a natural fit: not only does the dark, lusty mood of their punk-cabaret style suit the story, but LaCount’s artistic approach is to make productions relevant to their surroundings. The Dolls, of course, are as Boston as local bands get, having been spawned here and won last year’s Rumble. LaCount eliminated the cockney English and infused the story with more of a street angle. "The whole story is political — and we’ll have the DNC in town. It deals with legislating morality. That applies to our school system, religion, politics. I don’t know how Dr. Brodsky’s way of reforming Alex is different from cloning or sex education in schools. It’s about the placement of morality and where government chooses to intervene in our ability to make choices in America."

Company One presents A Clockwork Orange July 22 through August 14 at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End. Tickets are $15 to $25; call (617) 426-ARTS.