The story of the fight between two not quite serious businessmen, the beggar clan king Peachum and the burglar king Macheath, called Mackie Messer, advertised as a “piece with music” at the premiere in 1928, was basically the first German-language musical. Bertolt Brecht wrote the text together with Elisabeth Hauptmann, Kurt Weill composed the immortal music. The three achieved a legendary worldwide success.
With song lines like “And the shark has teeth and he wears them on his face”, or “Soldiers live on the cannons”, “Whether they like it or not, they are ready. That is sexual bondage”, “However you twist it, however you push it, first comes the eating, then comes the morals”, “Because that’s how people live, that they can so thoroughly forget that he’s a human being.”, “Who wouldn’t want to live in peace and unity, but the circumstances aren’t like that.”
In the new version of the St. Pauli Theater by Peter Jordan and Leonhard Koppelmann, the songs are pushed forward with all their force, they will be the secret center of the new interpretation. And if you look around, not only in the small world of the neighborhood, but also in the big world of politics, you have to realize that not much has changed since Brecht’s analysis. Or as he writes: “Who doesn’t want a paradise on earth? But the circumstances permit it? – No, they don’t allow it.” Rarely has social criticism been presented in such a light and tongue-in-cheek manner. Nothing has changed about that either.