In Soho, London's revue theatre district, the seductive gangster Mackie-Siș makes the most of his conquests by taking Polly, daughter of Peachum - the "king" of beggars - to the altar. Feeling their business in danger, the Peachums wage a "war" against the dreaded interloper who, with the help of the police, is imprisoned and sentenced to death by hanging. As if by magic, Mackie is saved by a pardon order from the newly crowned Queen, who welcomes him into the nobility, making him a knight!

First staged at Berlin's Schiffbauerdamm Theatre in 1928, Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera", set to music by Kurt Weill - a stinging satire on corrupt bourgeois society - conquered from the first musical chords and became one of the best-known and most performed works of German culture.

Present in the midst of the great problems of European life, the prominent playwright and theorist brings to the fore issues of pressing topicality by proposing solutions from the position of revolutionary and theatre reformer. The famous songs, couplets interspersed in the text and sung by different characters, with a pronounced denunciatory and accusatory accent, commenting on facts and expressing an attitude, support the well-known Brechtian theory of the critical distancing of the spectator.

Copyright holder: Suhrkamp Verlag

Photo Florin Ghioca

Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu

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