FACT FILE: Bertolt Brecht

FACT FILE: Bertolt Brecht

An enfant terrible with a voice you simply cannot ignore.

NAME: Eugene Bertolt Brecht

BORN: 1898, Bavaria

POLITICAL VIEWS: Communist, influenced heavily by Marx

NUMBER OF WIVES: 2 - Marianne Zoff and, later, Helene Weigel

WWI: Called up for military service as a medical orderly in 1918

FIRST PLAY: Drums in the Night, a play about a soldier returning home from WWI

THEATRICAL STYLE: Innovative, agitprop, dark comedy

LAST WISHES: To have his heart pierced by a stiletto and to be buried in a steel coffin - so the worms couldn't get to him.

The Threepenny Opera

After teaming up with Kurt Weill, it was in 1928 that the astonishing and provocative The Threepenny Opera opened to audiences in Berlin.

It is unquestionably Brecht's most famous play, but it was fraught with difficulties along the way.

When it came to his plays, Brecht was notorious for changing and editing scripts up until the very last minute. 

The dress rehearsal for The Threepenny Opera reportedly went on until 5am, with songs changed and even cut, and large parts of character's dialogue thrown away or edited. In fact, such was the amount of change, the first performance was nearly cancelled.

It did go ahead though, and subsequently went onto perform over 4,000 times at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

Now this iconic, politically sharp musical drama - full of dark comedy - is about to grace the Octagon Theatre's main auditorium...

So if you're ready for an unconventional, but entertaining, night at the theatre then come and join us!