The Threepenny Opera

When the war starts
Your brothers may change so much,
That it will not be possible to recognize their faces.
But you must remain yourself. They will go to war, no
Like a slaughterhouse, but
Like serious work. All
They will be forgotten.
But you must not forget anything. Alcohol will pour down your throat,
Like everyone else.
But you must remain sober.
Bertolt Brecht. Translated by Serhiy Zhadan.

“The Threepenny Opera” is a famous work by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, written by him in 1928, which has not lost its relevance to this day.
The music for the play was written by composer Kurt Weill.

According to the plot of the play, the main character is Mekkis, the unofficial owner of London’s Soho district, a thug who marries the young beauty Polly. With this, he makes an enemy – Jonathan – Polly’s father, who heads the local beggar community. Jonathan even bribes Officer Brown to put his new son-in-law behind bars. His wife Polly takes over the leadership of the gang.

The play “Three-gross Opera” of the Sumy National Theater of M. Shchepkin – the second official production in Ukraine during the years of independence.
Created by stage-director Maxim Bulgakov, the ballad opera, like B. Brecht’s work itself, is a socio-political satire.
Behind a certain gaiety of the plot, confusion and commotion, such vices of society and government, such as corruption, prostitution, venality of the police, etc., are hidden in the most disgusting manifestations. At the same time, using the example of Victorian England, the stage-director models a situation where post-war society, having recovered from the years of war, continues to live a normal life (which for some did not change during the war period). Society is not ready to accept yesterday’s defenders who went through the war and returned traumatized in body and soul. Society’s effort to distance itself from yesterday’s warriors, instead of helping, leads to the formation of a parallel world in which life is not the most important value, and death is more a gift of fate than a punishment.
The situation in the cautionary tale is quite likely for Ukrainian society, in the event that each of us does not realize that this is our war, this is our defenders, this is our future… this is something that does not lie on the surface, but should concern everyone. The project is financed by the Projektfonds Ukraine 2023 fund, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany and the Goethe-Institut.
Production rights Suhrkamp Verlag.

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