Happy End: Theatrical concert

Al Capone has not yet seen Alcatraz, he is 30 years old and has only been the illicit king of Chicago for a short time. It is 1929 and on the other side of the Atlantic, Bertolt Brecht, at the age of 31, faces the pressure of the first premiere after the success of The Threepenny Opera. Shared pressure with the composer Kurt Weill and the writer Elisabeth Hauptmann with whom he created Happy End, a musical comedy that debuted in Berlin in September of that year, portraying a Chicago controlled by gangsters.

It had contingency and everything you could expect from a musical of this type: songs, tough boys, pretty women, danger, alcohol and guns. But it didn't go well and it didn't last long on the billboard. The political context and content did not help. The world was in crisis, incubating the Great Depression that would be consolidated just a month later with the stock market crash. And Happy End took aim and fired at capitalism with lines like this: “What is robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?”

In a corrupt Chicago, Lieutenant Lilian Holiday leads a Salvation Army group that aims to confront the sin of a criminal gang. Her goal is to convert Bill Cracker, leader of the organization. To do so, Lilian will use unorthodox methods that will put her promising religious career at risk while at the same time getting her romantically entangled with the gangster. But behind the candidness of the argument the humor and irony of a criticism of what is understood as happy ending shines through, resignifying this apparent struggle between good and evil as a functional articulation of capitalism.

"The work has many current themes. The crisis today is a product of the fact that legal and political fictions are being destroyed and the group of people involved is quite broad. The range has already opened in such a way that you do not know who are the good and who are the bad. In the work it is the same. The happy ending is also an inherited, gringo fiction, that is why the work is a story of that story and allows a reflection on what is happening now.", explains Álvaro Viguera, director of the production that debuts in Chile thanks to a co-production between GAM and La Santa Producciones.

Happy End is the first musical comedy co-produced by GAM and LA SANTA Producciones and professional premiere in Latin America.

GAM COPRODUCTION

Text: Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann | Music: Kurt Weill | Director: Álvaro Viguera | Cast: Geraldine Neary, Gabriel Urzúa, Elvira López, Gloria Münchmeyer, Felipe Castro, Catalina Martin, Gabriel Cañas, Santiago Rodríguez, Rodrigo Lisboa, Adriana Stuven, Mercedes Mujica, Cristóbal Muhr and Natalia Grez | Translation: Omar Saavedra Santis | Musical Director: Marcelo Vergara | Orchestra: Marcelo Vergara, Yohan Aranda, Cecilia Arce, Diego Morales, Karem Ruíz, Camilo Arriagada, Cristian Molina, Gad Xoyon | General Producer: Antonia Santa María | Costume Design: Andrea Carolina | Vocal Coach: Elvira López | Choreography: Gonzálo Beltran | Co-production: GAM - La Santa Producciones | Copyright: *By Arrangement with Universal Edition AG. Vienna”; Barry Editorial | Photo credits:Schkolnick Studio

Communications: GAM

Previous seasons

The work had its premiere on March 18, 2016 at GAM, a season that extended until May 15.