Review: Kerjäläisooppera

HUMAN DIGNITY IS ALSO FOR THE TOAD

In 1928
Premieres
Got a classic
is still themed
topical.


Over the years, The Beggar’s Opera, a collaboration between Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, has become one of the great theatrical successes of the last century, which does not seem to bite much in the teeth of time. The agelessness of the story is well illustrated, among other things, by the fact that it could easily be transferred to the present day without suffering the whole hardly at all.
The experienced and very confident Kari Heiskanen has placed it somewhere at the beginning of the last century and made the performance a work that respects the Brechtian legacy very well.

The story of the classic play is probably familiar to most people. In London’s underworld, the crime boss Macheat, also known as Knife Mackie, holds power. He has a number of villains, whores, beggars and even police officers under his power and enchantment. One of the latest to fall for him is a young innocent Polly, who marries Mackie, much to the horror of her parents, who happen to be the owners of a shop called Beggars’ Friend. Brecht then describes these hard-to-do people in London and the laws that govern their lives in his own distancing style.
It is no wonder that a few years after the premiere of The Beggar’s Opera , Brecht was forced into exile after the Nazis came to power and banned performances of the play. Although the events of the play are formally set in London, it clearly describes the mental atmosphere that dominated Germany in the 1920s and which the Nazis then exploited to rise to power. Predicting their rise to power and criticizing it before real life events is one of the most ingenious insights in Brecht’s text.
He mixes up the moral question in a dizzying way by introducing the laws that normally prevail in business to the criminal world. The morality of today’s businessmen and the profits of large corporations are, to put it mildly, questionable activities. All kinds of greed, insensitivity and cold exploitation of others, which Brecht depicts in his play, are unfortunately familiar themes from today’s Finland, for example. Money seems to be the most important thing that divides people into different categories.

The beggar’s opera is a musical play, but not the easiest one to digest. Of course, everyone knows the song of Puukko-Mackie, but most of the other songs may not be remembered as easily. This should not be taken as a reproach at all. In the songs, Brecht and Kurt Weill describe the reality in which the characters of the play have to live in a coldly incisive way. The songs are powerfully statement-making and proclamatory, in the familiar style of their authors.
In Brechtian fashion, distance is also taken from the characters, for example, by making some actors comment on the course of the play as themselves. For example, Leena Rapola’s brilliantly portrayed nameless joybird demands a ticket from the front row viewer to see or suddenly realizes that she is in the wrong scene.
Most of the characters are also made up and styled so that the viewer does not get too close to them. Not that viewers are not interested in the fates of the characters, but identification and empathy in the traditional way are things that Brecht avoided throughout his career. Personally, I like the maestro style a lot, but it certainly doesn’t suit everyone. clang.

The actors are in good shape across the board. Oskari Katajisto is just the right amount of sloppy and rotten Puukko-Mackie. Vuokko Hovatta is a sensitive and emotional Polly. As a singer, perhaps the most outstanding is the wonderful Riitta Havukainen, whose interpretations emphasize the sometimes slightly heavy aftertaste of the life lived.
The supporting cast does a convincing job sometimes as the gang of Puukko-Mackie, sometimes as, beggars or policemen. They often act without traditional set design on an empty stage or in completely minimalist sets that are quickly pushed onto the stage. A traditional Brechtian solution that distinguishes the play in a fine way from all kinds of average performances.