A deserted wharf in an old city. A man whose name everybody knows whistles a tune that everybody knows. He’s just done a job you wouldn’t do in the light of day. Now, don’t get weak, whatever you do, don’t get soft! We’re in Soho, Alabama, in Havana or in Surabaya, the hometown of handsome Johnny, who left a broken heart in every port. The love songs of the heartbroken lovers sound so mournful, even the rats creep off to their holes. But how false are the undertones of the songs. Not like the singing of Sven Ratzke and Claron McFadden brides and pimps found in Groschenblues. There’s dreaming about the fastest way To the Next Little Dollar. A cheap barmaid secretly rejoices about a head rolling over the wharf – Hoppla! What happened to all the ‘Tränen von gestern abend’ (Tears from last night)? They’ve been smothered in a tauntingly singing saw and the evil giggling of two rivals on the marriage market for poor souls. Yes, the sea is blue, so blue, but if you have nothing to eat you still end up on your back in the brothel. Who cares about “moral”? Rather give a few Groschen, pennies or nickels for a piece of bread! Even every Happy End sounds fake in the shadows of the big city. No wonder, because that brothel, the criminals’ love’s nest and the cheap café were originally situated in Berlin. And as everyone knows, Berlin is the capital of absurd erotica. But doused in booze and poverty, every love duet melts in the nocturnal caverns into a mixture of blues and opera – yes, into cabaret. It’s the same big-city feeling that the poet Bertolt Brecht and the composer Kurt Weill brought from Berlin all across the world, all the way to America. As it edges toward the century mark, Sven Ratzke and Claron McFadden and friends show how universal and timeless the Groschenblues is. Hey, Johnny, play that song from “damals” one more time, that song from way back when …