What do you think?
Rate this book
Happy End: A Melodrama with Songs by Bertolt Brecht
Hallelujah Lil, a Salvation Army lieutenant, tries to save the souls of Bill Cracker and his fellow gang members
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1929
20 people want to read
About the author
Bertolt Brecht
1,629 books1,940 followersEugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 2, 2025
This play actually shocked me with how much I enjoyed it. Call me basic, I don’t care. I LIKE COMMERCIAL THEATRE. Sometimes I just want to laugh and be entertained. Not everything needs a deeper meaning, sometimes it’s fun to just read about a crime gang having beef with the Salvation Army and then all becoming friends on Christmas Eve. LET MY MAN SAM SELL HIS CHURCH ORGAN. This might not be the kind of play Brecht is known for, but I’m glad to see he had a sense of humor.
December 4, 2022
Happy End was Brecht and Weill's follow-up to their wildly popular Threepenny Opera; as so often happens in these cases, the successor is not as good as the original. But it's dazzlingly inventive, filled with amazing songs, and, surprisingly, a heckuva good time.
It takes place in 1919 in Chicago--not the real place, mind you, but a version of it that Brecht and his collaborator Elizabeth Hauptmann made up based on stories and gangster movies they'd seen (the co-authors used the name "Dorothy Lane" for the show's libretto credit). Here, we meet Bill Cracker and his gang of criminals, who have monikers like "Baby Face" and "The Professor"; they're a less dangerous bunch than Mack the Knife's crowd, with the exception of Dr. Nakamura ("The Governor"), a comic-book Japanese villain who pronounces Bill's last name "Clacker" and is generally menacing and inscrutable.
Into Bill's Beer Hall one night come members of the Salvation Army, led by Sister "Hallelujah" Lillian Holliday, bent on reforming these bad guys. They give up fairly quickly--all except Lillian, that is, who decides to stay alone with Bill for a one-on-one sermon. She has also fallen in love, and so (as he reluctantly realizes) has he.
Lillian's evening with the master criminal creates a giant scandal and it looks like she may be kicked out of the Salvation Army. Simultaneously, it appears that Bill is being double-crossed and that his life might be in danger. Will love and honor (however defined) somehow triumph?
The unexpected answer turns out to be a wholehearted yes; unexpected because, hey, it's a Brecht play, and the lovers we've been rooting for aren't supposed to matter in the end. But Happy End is, in fact, relatively lackadaisical on the political front: the authors seem more interested in satirizing (then-)contemporaneous pop culture than in making an impassioned plea for social justice and equality. Which is not to say that there's no message here; just that the frontal assault on the audience is relaxed if not entirely absent. Compare the content of the most popular songs in Threepenny and Happy End to see what I mean: the stark banality of evil in "Mack the Knife" versus the off-kilter nostalgia of "Bilbao Song"; "Pirate Jenny"'s amoral heroine avenging a lifetime of exploitation versus "Surabaya Johnny"'s singer mourning the lover who spurned her.
Which brings me to the songs which are, in so many ways, the raison d'etre of Happy End. I've already named the two most famous numbers; there's also a terrific piece delivered by Bill's gang, "The Mandalay Song," plus Lillian's raunchy ditty, "The Sailors' Tango," and several delicious hymns with titles like "Brother, Give Yourself a Shove" that one imagines Weill and Brecht had a hoot creating. It must be noted that the English adaptation is by the late Michael Feingold, who I think we can count on to deliver the essence of the original rather faithfully.
It takes place in 1919 in Chicago--not the real place, mind you, but a version of it that Brecht and his collaborator Elizabeth Hauptmann made up based on stories and gangster movies they'd seen (the co-authors used the name "Dorothy Lane" for the show's libretto credit). Here, we meet Bill Cracker and his gang of criminals, who have monikers like "Baby Face" and "The Professor"; they're a less dangerous bunch than Mack the Knife's crowd, with the exception of Dr. Nakamura ("The Governor"), a comic-book Japanese villain who pronounces Bill's last name "Clacker" and is generally menacing and inscrutable.
Into Bill's Beer Hall one night come members of the Salvation Army, led by Sister "Hallelujah" Lillian Holliday, bent on reforming these bad guys. They give up fairly quickly--all except Lillian, that is, who decides to stay alone with Bill for a one-on-one sermon. She has also fallen in love, and so (as he reluctantly realizes) has he.
Lillian's evening with the master criminal creates a giant scandal and it looks like she may be kicked out of the Salvation Army. Simultaneously, it appears that Bill is being double-crossed and that his life might be in danger. Will love and honor (however defined) somehow triumph?
The unexpected answer turns out to be a wholehearted yes; unexpected because, hey, it's a Brecht play, and the lovers we've been rooting for aren't supposed to matter in the end. But Happy End is, in fact, relatively lackadaisical on the political front: the authors seem more interested in satirizing (then-)contemporaneous pop culture than in making an impassioned plea for social justice and equality. Which is not to say that there's no message here; just that the frontal assault on the audience is relaxed if not entirely absent. Compare the content of the most popular songs in Threepenny and Happy End to see what I mean: the stark banality of evil in "Mack the Knife" versus the off-kilter nostalgia of "Bilbao Song"; "Pirate Jenny"'s amoral heroine avenging a lifetime of exploitation versus "Surabaya Johnny"'s singer mourning the lover who spurned her.
Which brings me to the songs which are, in so many ways, the raison d'etre of Happy End. I've already named the two most famous numbers; there's also a terrific piece delivered by Bill's gang, "The Mandalay Song," plus Lillian's raunchy ditty, "The Sailors' Tango," and several delicious hymns with titles like "Brother, Give Yourself a Shove" that one imagines Weill and Brecht had a hoot creating. It must be noted that the English adaptation is by the late Michael Feingold, who I think we can count on to deliver the essence of the original rather faithfully.
June 1, 2025
Maybe a tad more cohesive than The Threepenny Opera in its message, much less entertaining though (although the music is probably good if I ever get around to watching an adaptation). Only the songs are definitively Brecht's, but that goes for many of his plays anyhow. Fun enough in spite of being bested by several other similar plays by the dramatist.
January 30, 2026
I guess God bless sex appeal or whatever
October 12, 2015
The Happy End may be the best cabaret every produced by the team of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Certainly none of their other productions including the Three Penny Opera has as many great songs:
-1- The Bilbao Song (a.k.a Bill's Beerhall)
-2- How to be a Big Shot
-3- The Mandalay Song
-4- Surabaya Johnny
It is a great story of redemption. The hero Bill Cracker has achieved professional success as a mobster hitman in Chicago but not happiness. Fortunately he meets Lilian Holiday, a poor honest girl who after surrendering her virginity to the notorious Surabaya Johnny, finds redemption in the Salvation army.
Lilian persuades Bill that he can only find happiness through being good. Bill smitten in love brings his entire gang into the Salvation Army along with the loot from their most recent bank heist.
On stage, the Happy End has had a strange history. It was first performed in Berlin in 1929. Coming a year after their monster hit the Three Penny Opera expectations where high. However, in the year that separated the two works much had changed in Germany. Whereas Brecht's communist affiliations and Weill's Jewishness were not problems in 1928 when the Three Penny Opera debuted, they were in 1929. The Happy End closed after seven performances. It would not receive its Broadway debut until 1977. This production which won three Tonys featured the incomparable Meryl Streep interpreting Surabya Johnny.
I was lucky enough to catch this great work in its debut run at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Like Bill's Beer Hall, it was tremendous.
-1- The Bilbao Song (a.k.a Bill's Beerhall)
-2- How to be a Big Shot
-3- The Mandalay Song
-4- Surabaya Johnny
It is a great story of redemption. The hero Bill Cracker has achieved professional success as a mobster hitman in Chicago but not happiness. Fortunately he meets Lilian Holiday, a poor honest girl who after surrendering her virginity to the notorious Surabaya Johnny, finds redemption in the Salvation army.
Lilian persuades Bill that he can only find happiness through being good. Bill smitten in love brings his entire gang into the Salvation Army along with the loot from their most recent bank heist.
On stage, the Happy End has had a strange history. It was first performed in Berlin in 1929. Coming a year after their monster hit the Three Penny Opera expectations where high. However, in the year that separated the two works much had changed in Germany. Whereas Brecht's communist affiliations and Weill's Jewishness were not problems in 1928 when the Three Penny Opera debuted, they were in 1929. The Happy End closed after seven performances. It would not receive its Broadway debut until 1977. This production which won three Tonys featured the incomparable Meryl Streep interpreting Surabya Johnny.
I was lucky enough to catch this great work in its debut run at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Like Bill's Beer Hall, it was tremendous.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews