History Theatre / TheThreepennyOpera

* DeusExMachina: At the very end, [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere out of nowhere]], Macheath is saved from the gallows with the information that he's not only pardoned but won a peerage. This was a deliberate parody showing how criminals are spared their fate and receive unearned rewards in the manner of heroes in the old trope.

But 'ee keeps it out of sight

And a jack-knife 'ath Macheath, dear\\

And it shows them pearly white\\

-->And the shark has pretty teeth, dear\\

And a jack-knife hath Macheath, dear\\
But he keeps it out of sight

* EverythingsEvenWorseWithSharks The song compares Mackie to the Shark with Mackie being EvilerThanThou:
-->Oh the poor shark \\
Yes, the sweet shark \\
It has big teeth, buried deep. \\
Then there's Macheath \\
with his big knife \\
Hidden in his sleeve.

''Die Dreigroschenoper''[[note]]Which, confusingly, literally translates to the three ''shilling'' opera, but whatever[[/note]] is Creator/BertoltBrecht and Music/KurtWeill's DarkerAndEdgier adaptation of John Gay's ''Theatre/TheBeggarsOpera''. Despite the title, [[NonindicativeName it's a musical]]. It was first performed on August 31, 1928 in Berlin.

''Die Dreigroschenoper'' is Creator/BertoltBrecht and Music/KurtWeill's DarkerAndEdgier adaptation of John Gay's ''Theatre/TheBeggarsOpera''. Despite the title, [[NonindicativeName it's a musical]]. It was first performed on August 31, 1928 in Berlin.

--> '''Tiger Brown''': ''🎶We'll meet a darker race!🎶''
--> '''Mack:''' ''🎶We'll fight them face to face!🎶''
--> '''Tiger Brown''' ''🎶Cause it is clear we're better!🎶''
--> '''Mack:''' ''🎶We'll kill them it doesn't matter!🎶''
--> '''Mack and Tiger Brown''' ''🎶[[ImAHumanitarian We'll chop them up and make from them a beefsteak tartare]]!🎶''

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Bobby Darrin's cover of Mack the Knife projects this. Within the play, it's only true of Polly Peachum, the other girls were prostitutes who presumably didn't have a choice in the matter. In her "Barbara Song", Polly Peachum describes how she virtuously turned down all the respectable men who asked for her maidenhead...until a man showed up who was neither respectable nor bothered asking....

** In the original production, the song known as Music/PirateJenny was to be sung by Polly and intended to be an ImagineSpot about how much she hates her family and dreams of escape. Later productions, and the 1931 Film version, gave it to Lotte Lenya's Jenny. By merely changing the character and singer, and especially Lenya's performance, the song acquired its now familiar meaning of an oppressed woman's fantasy ImagineSpot of revolutionary justice and retribution.

-> ''"You're about to hear an opera for beggars. And because this opera was created so glamorously, the way only beggars can dream something up, and because it should still be so cheap that only beggars would pay for it, it's called '''The Threepenny Opera'''".''
-> -- The Street Singer

* [[https://www.amazon.com/Threepenny-Opera-1954-Blitzstein-Adaptation/dp/B00004X09T The 1956 Off-Broadway production]] directed by Marc Blitzstein, for which Lotte Lenya won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny. This version featured many of the common {{Bowdlerization}} of Brecht's original, but was nonetheless successful commercially and highly influential in its own right. The production featured Edward Asner (as Mr Peachum), Charlotte Rae as Mrs Peachum, Be a Arthur (as Lucy), Creator/JerryOrbach (as PC Smith, the Street Singer and Mack), John Astin (as Readymoney Matt/Matt of the Mint) and Jerry Stiller (as Crookfinger Jake) as members of the cast during its run.

* AnachronismStew: The story nominally takes place in 1904. While the "Cannon Song" and its discussion of colonial warfare would seem to place the story in the mid to late 1800s, the coronation the play is centered around is that of Queen Victoria, thus implying an earlier date. Not to mention that the play its adapted from was written and set in the 1700s. Oh, and Macheath tends to dress as a RoaringTwenties gangster. The Donmar Warehouse production with Tom Hollander had something of a SettingUpdate with references to onion bhajis and Marks and Spencers in the lyrics.

* JoinTheArmyTheySaid: "The Cannon Song" evokes this. John, Jim and George are three friends who sign up for the CallToAdventure. They end up committing atrocities against people in colonial outposts and eventually end up as ShellShockedVeteran, disgraced for being deserters or in the case of George, shot for looting:

* KnifeNut: Macheath
* LighterAndSofter: English translations of the ''Moritat'' tend to erase the verses that describe Mack the Knife's more heinous crimes, like child rape and an arson that killed seven children, and even gloss over the celebration of cannibalism in The Cannon Song.

* MoodWhiplash: Brecht's alienation-effect was all about creating this effect. The lyrics and the style of music tend to be so-off. Ballad of Mack the Knife is sung by a jolly street-singer who is totally nonchalant about Macheath's crimes. The most shocking is "The Ballad of Immoral Earnings" a jaunty romantic [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal song sung in a swooning style]] that talks about the whorehouse that featured DomesticAbuse and a disgusting back-alley abortion described in visceral detail.

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Not within the play, but in a novel adaptation, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Threepenny Novel]], Macheath is identified with UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper. As a ShoutOut, Macheath also appears in ''Film/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'', and is presented either as a JackTheRipoff, or maybe the ''actual'' Jack the Ripper.

* WeirdTradeUnion: Peachum's guild of beggars

* HoYay: Mack and Brown. Brecht has admitted that it's on purpose: Brown's love for Macheath is what keeps him going, but it's damaging to his job as a keeper of the peace. [[invoked]]

--> '''Macheath''':''[[IgnoredEpiphany But young men's blood goes on being red]]''\\

* ''Mack the Knife'' (1989) an English film adaption. Not commercially or critically successful, but notable for its cast: Creator/RaulJulia as Mack, Richard Harris as Peachum, Julie Walters as Mrs. Peachum, Bill Nighy as Tiger Brown, and [[Music/TheWho Roger Daltrey]] as the Street Singer

* The 1976 production done by the Public Theatre, later transferring to Broadway. Notable for ''not'' bowdlerizing the lyrics or the story. It starred Creator/RaulJulia as Mack.

* ''Mack the Knife'' (1989) an English film adaption. Not commercially successful, but notable for its cast: Creator/RaulJulia as Mack, Richard Harris as Peachum, Julie Walters as Mrs. Peach, Bill Nighy as Tiger Brown, and Roger Daltrey as the Street Singer

-> ''You're about to hear an opera for beggars. And because this opera was created so glamorously, the way only beggars can dream something up, and because it should still be so cheap that only beggars would pay for it, it's called '''The Threepenny Opera'''.''

-> ''You're about to hear an opera for beggars. And because this opera was created so glamorously, the way only beggars can dream something up, and because it should still be so cheap that only beggars would pay for it, it's called ''The Threepenny Opera''.''

-- The Street Singer

* [[https://www.amazon.com/Threepenny-Opera-1954-Blitzstein-Adaptation/dp/B00004X09T The 1956 Off-Broadway production]] directed by Marc Blitzstein, for which Lotte Lenya won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny. This version featured many of the common {{Bowdlerization}} of Brecht's original, but was nonetheless successful commercially and highly influential in its own right. The production featured Edward Asner (as Mr Peachum), Charlotte Rae as Mrs Peachum, Bea Arthur (as Lucy), Creator/JerryOrbach (as PC Smith, the Street Singer and Mack), John Astin (as Readymoney Matt/Matt of the Mint) and Jerry Stiller (as Crookfinger Jake) as members of the cast during its run.

''Die Dreigroschenoper'' is Creator/BertoltBrecht and Music/KurtWeill's DarkerAndEdgier adaptation of John Gay's ''Theatre/TheBeggarsOpera''. Despite the title, [[NonindicativeName it's a musical]].

* SociopathicSoldier: Macheath and Tiger Brown as shown in the "Cannon Song"

--> '''Tiger Brown''' ''🎶Cause it is clear we'ere better!🎶''

--> '''Tiger Brown''' ''🎶Cause it is clear we'll better!🎶''

* KingOfTheHomeless: A brutal deconstruction. Macheath and Peachum function very much like capitalists who exploit prostitutes and beggars by overworking them and exploiting them. Both of them have connections with the law and end up assimilating into bourgeois society.

* [[https://www.amazon.com/Threepenny-Opera-1954-Blitzstein-Adaptation/dp/B00004X09T The 1956 Off-Broadway production]] directed by Marc Blitzstein, for which Lotte Lenya won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny. This version featured many of the common {{Bowdlerization}} of Brecht's original, but was nonetheless successful commercially and highly influential in its own right. The production featured Edward Asner (as Mr Peachum), Charlotte Rae as Mrs Peachum, Bea Arthur (as Lucy), Jerry Orbach (as PC Smith, the Street Singer and Mack), John Astin (as Readymoney Matt/Matt of the Mint) and Jerry Stiller (as Crookfinger Jake) as members of the cast during its run.

** In the original production, the song known as PirateJenny was to be sung by Polly and intended to be an ImagineSpot about how much she hates her family and dreams of escape. Later productions, and the 1931 Film version, gave it to Lotte Lenya's Jenny. By merely changing the character and singer, and especially Lenya's performance, the song acquired its now familiar meaning of an oppressed woman's fantasy ImagineSpot of revolutionary justice and retribution.

* The third part of Creator/AlanMoore and Kevin O'Neill's ''ComicBook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'' (''Century'') adopts the structure and approach of Brecht and Weill's production and features many in-panel musical numbers and whole plots based on ''What Keeps Mankind Alive, Pirate Jenny, Mack the Knife, The Ballad of Immoral Earnings, Canon Song''.

* LighterAndSofter: English translations of the ''Moritat'' tend to erase the verses that describe Mack the Knife's more heinous crimes, like child rape and an arson that killed seven children, and even gloss over the celebration of cannibalism in The Canon Song.