The authors moved The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht on the ground of lawless Petrograd of the 1920s and rhymed Mack the Knife, a gangster, with Lyonka Panteleyev, the thief. In fact, the action takes place not in the actual 1920s but in some Soviet utopia.

In the best traditions of a musical, a live jazz band and a string orchestra play on stage. The parallel with our current times is emphasized with the musical score written by composer Ivan Kushnir and unusual modern adaptation of the songs dating back to the beginning of the XXth century.

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“This play is about love and compromises, it is about the end of hope. Deeper and deeper we are descending into that swamp of satiation, where hopes become a routine. Why does it happen this way? Because you allow compromises. You ease somewhere and think that it’s okay. You paint your emptiness with nice colours, you garnish it with nice things and think that it will go well this way. This is compromise. Life is like a text editor. It edits you all the time and suggests changing your words. To live your life means to switch off this automatic word replacement function and find your mistakes on your own.” (Interview with Maxim Didenko and Nikolay Dreiden).