Review: Kerjäläisooppera

THE COLOURFUL COMING OF THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

The Beggar’s Opera, or The Threepenny Opera, is an entertaining musical play by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill that premiered in 1928 and is set in the London underworld. Entertainment does not remove the intellectually sharp sociability of the basic Brechtian.
The showdown between the beggar clan led by Jeremiah Peachum and the Knife-Mackie criminal gang stands in front of the mirror of the entire society and unravels both financial and human knots.
Even though the events take place in the 20th century, the text slips nicely into the world of today’s shady men and dark money flows.
The performance, which premiered at the Helsinki City Theatre, invites you to analyse the features of epic theatre, as they are so clearly visible in Kari Heiskanen’s direction.
The stage text is alienated and the roles remain roles. The audience is spoken to directly and the plot twists are commented on. Almost all the features of Brechtian theatre, including posters, are realised, with speed and even exaggeration.
The open large stage offers a magnificent setting for the movement of beggars. The space creates an image of a world bigger than London. When the rider who saves the Knife Mackie from being hanged in the final scene arrives from the cloudy blue sky landscape of Microsoft that reveals the crashing back wall, the picture of the global community is complete.

Delicious dialogue between songs and lyrics

The most attractive role is played by Riitta Havukainen as Mrs. Peachhum. As the wife of a beggar king who gets drunk, she is rudely presumptuous and a two-faced squirrel. Havukainen performs her vocal part with her already familiar virtuosity.

Vuokko Hovatta goes against her parents as Polly Peachum by marrying Knife Mackie. This creates a tricky conflict between mother and daughter. Hovatta takes Polly’s blue-eyed girl’s growth into a woman who is aware of it in a fresh and precise way.

Oskari Katajisto Knife Mackie is a bit one-liner and unsurprising.
In fact, the colourful encounters between different people and groups become more important than individual performances. The whores and subjects of the Knife Macs are intact and well-stylized as a group.

The beggars of Heikki Sankari’s Mr. Peachum rush to the stage en masse whenever necessary, sometimes to take care of a task.
Weill’s songs speak, play, boast, but all in all, delightful.
When the last song echoes, it feels like this is how it was supposed to go: primarily to entertain, but also to provoke thoughts.