The Threepenny Opera Themes

Girls, girls, girls—besides money and murder, that's all that Mac the Knife thinks about in Threepenny Opera. And the fact that most of those girls are, ahem, prostitutes, means that he's only go...

There might not be visible blood, guts, and gore onstage, but violence is a constant, present theme in The Threepenny Opera. Every character engages in some sort of violence, whether it's economic,...

Hypocrisy is Bertolt Brecht's bread and butter (and that's some alliteration for you). He loves to reveal the hypocrisies of bourgeois morality, and The Threepenny Opera is chockfull of examples. T...

Things aren't always as they seem—this could be the motto for the characters in The Threepenny Opera. Whether it's a pregnancy that turns out to be a cushion shoved up a dress, or an amputee who...

Whoa, those are some deep words we're wading into here. Even though The Threepenny Opera is funny and a little farcical, though, it has some deep currents running through it about what it means to...

Gimme, gimme, gimme: that's almost every character's mantra in The Threepenny Opera. You've got Peachum, who spends his days devising ways to get people to pay beggars more, inspiring pity with cos...

The Threepenny Opera is like a study in criminality at all levels. You've got the small-time guys, like the kid who comes into Peachum's shop, in trouble for begging on a block that he wasn't "lic...

The play The Threepenny Opera is set in various locations throughout London, but several scenes take place in a jail cell. Mac the Knife, the notorious criminal, is sent to jail twice. He escapes o...