In a few years, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera will turn 100. It’s hardly likely to slide into obsolescence in the meantime. A scathing critique of ruling-class barbarism and capitalist corruption, it is a work that tends to suit the times, whatever the times. Ruling classes are always barbaric and capitalism is always corrupt.
Australian-born, German-based theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky returns to the festival he once ran with this Berliner Ensemble production: a sleek, sly and perversely sexy take on a show that feels tailored specifically to his talents. While ostensibly set in London, The Threepenny Opera reeks of Weimar Berlin, the seediness and cynicism of a society on the precipice oozing through every pore. Kosky often seems the master of the cynical gesture, his theatrical instincts honed to glittering disillusionment.
