| Berliner Ensemble
The Threepenny Opera Italian Premiere
by Bertolt Brecht
music by Kurt Weill
direction, set design and lighting concept by Robert Wilson
costume designer Jacques Reynaud
co-direction Ann-Christin Rommen
musical direction
Hans-Jörn Brandenburg,
Stefan Rager
with the Berliner Ensemble Company
a project by Change Performing Arts project | Set within the scum of criminality, prostitution and police corruption, this evergreen play blends the most bitter morality with an amusing fixture of alienation. The author seems to want to prove that the methods of criminality aren´t so different from those of gentlemen and powerful figures, separated mostly by a class struggle that makes thieves and crooks victims of the system. Famous for its paradigmatic characters and for its well-known songs, The Threepenny Opera is extremely fluid and enjoyable in its form but rich of implications and cultural and political references. Jonathan Peachum is a businessman specialized in selling beggars equipment. His business with "the poorest of poor" goes magnificently until one day he finds out that his daughter Polly has secretly married a gangster, Mackie Messer. Peachum is shocked. In spite of Polly´s wise advice, Mackie doesn´t leave town and even visits some prostitutes in Turnbridge who frame him. A death sentence seems inevitable, until a Queen´s Knight orders his release and offers him a noble title.
Wilson´s interpretation of Brecht to the Berliner Ensemble is comical, sensual, grotesque and perverted. He exploits the story in every aspect, depth and angle, turning the sequence upside down: first the images and movements, then the actor´s monologues and dialogues. Another great surprise is the execution of Kurt Weill’s music: the pirate ship is transformed into a sadistic child’s song, the "Kanonen-Song" between Macheath´s former gang and policeman Tiger Brown – a ballet of crazed puppets – is energetically clamorous. |
