The Threepenny Opera Themes
Lust
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...
Violence
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
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...
Appearances
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...
Life, Consciousness, and Existence
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...
Greed
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...
Criminality
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...
Freedom and Confinement
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...