THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR CANONIZING AMERICAN MUSICALS ON GERMAN STAGES

Barrie Kosky brought Broadway to Berlin in a big way—and he's got even more musicals on the way

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The Threepenny Opera at BAM marks the first major New York showcase of director Barrie Kosky’s work. Photo: Moritz Haase

When Broadway and West End types talk about Germany, chances are they mean Hamburg.

For decades Hamburg has been the leading outpost of musical theater in Deutschland—and, arguably, in all of Europe (at least until Madrid started giving the city a run for its money). That’s thanks to the efforts of commercial entities like Stage Entertainment and Ambassador Theatre Group, which do bustling local business with Broadway and West End-replica shows. You can also find musicals in towns like Stuttgart and Cologne—and who can forget the frankly iconic production of Starlight Express that’s been running in Bochum for 37 years?

But if you look beyond Germany’s commercial theater sector, you’ll find that big, splashy productions of classic American musicals have found a foothold in the cultural hub of Berlin. Credit for that largely goes to the 133-year-old, state-subsidized Komische Oper—and to one man in particular: the Australian-born, Berlin-based Barrie Kosky.

During his 10-year tenure as the head of the Komische Oper, Kosky directed productions of classics including Kiss Me, Kate and Fiddler on the Roof that ran alongside a diverse repertory of operas and operettas. Since his return to freelance work in 2022 he’s remained affiliated with Komische, where he’s staged original productions of La Cage aux Folles, Chicago, and Sweeney Todd—with more musicals on the way, both at the Komische Oper and beyond.

“It was really Barrie Kosky who was probably the most important figure in legitimizing musical theater in Germany,” says David Savran, the CUNY theater scholar and author of Tell It To The World: The Broadway Musical Abroad.

Musical theater is, of course, the lifeblood of the international commercial theater industry. But except for a co-directing credit on a production of The Magic Flute that played the Mostly Mozart festival in 2019, New York—the global capital of commercial theater—hasn’t yet had a significant opportunity to check out Kosky’s work. Until now.

Next month, Kosky gets a Gotham showcase when his production of The Threepenny Opera, which originated at the Berliner Ensemble in 2021, arrives at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a quick run (April 3-6), and I got a chance to chat with him ahead of the run.

He was in London when we spoke, hard at work on a production of Wagner’s Die Walküre that bows at the Royal Ballet and Opera in May. But he took the time for a late-night call with me to discuss

• the mood in Berlin in the face of major cuts to arts funding,

• the influence of German theater on the world’s biggest, busiest, international directors,

• why his productions have been so rarely seen in the U.S.,

• his recent takes on some of Broadway’s best-known titles,

• his signature aesthetic (or lack thereof), and

• a few teasers regarding what musicals—both pre-existing and brand-new—we can expect from him next.

THE THREAT TO BERLIN’S ART AND INFLUENCE

For decades Berlin has been a city where the arts are very generously funded, but as of this year there’s been a big cut of about 13%—or €130 million (~$140 million)—to the city’s cultural budget. What’s the local mood like?