About This Show
An allegory of innocence triumphing over evil, Brundibár was originally composed in the years leading up to World War II and performed at Terezin, the Nazi’s notorious “model ghetto.” This new adaptation of Brundibár by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner and acclaimed author-illustrator Maurice Sendak is presented alongside the pair’s adaptation of Comedy on the Bridge, an absurd commentary on war also written in Czechoslovakia in the thirties. According to Kushner, “Both shows are a testament to the creative power of human beings, even in dark times, to turn ugliness into music.” They will be performed by a multigenerational cast that includes 30 local school children singing the show’s moral: “Let us be brave, and make bullies behave!”
Like the book and the original opera, Brundibár is the story of a young brother and sister who join forces with talking animals and a throng of other children to outwit a sinister organ grinder and earn enough money to buy milk for their sick mother. In Comedy on the Bridge riddles are solved, secrets are revealed, and love is reborn when a pair of young lovers/sweethearts, a businessman and his wife, and a baffled schoolmaster are trapped between two opposing armies on a bridge.