Dead Dog in a Suitcase (And Other Love Songs) at Shoreditch Town Hall, E1
reviewed for The Times, 4 December 2015
Macheath (Dominic Marsh) gets to grips with Punch
When the cult theatre company Kneehigh announced it was adapting The Beggar’s Opera, I expected a heterodox transformation. So, it seems, did the writer Carl Grose, who insisted on changing the title. As the programme intones: “it seemed an important statement of intent that he wasn’t simply adapting John Gay’s 1728 original but radically rewriting it.”
The result is slick and seductive, but while Dead Dog in a Suitcase captures all the irrepressible energy of Gay’s underworld ballad opera, it does so by staying unswervingly loyal to it. Based on Gay’s model, it’s not nearly as radical as Brecht’s 1928 Threepenny Opera, of whose influence only traces are visible.
Dominic Marsh’s hipster Macheath, T-shirt and collared jacket to match, comes heartbreakingly close to redemption, when he’s not knocking up working girls or shooting politicians. He’s suave and sexy, natch. Yet if you want to establish an Englishman’s villainy, have him take out a dog — as Macheath does during his hit on bourgeois, earnest Mayor Goodman. Shades of Jeremy Thorpe.
Meanwhile, Macheath is torn between wide-eyed Polly Peachum (“don’t call me Polly Pocket”), daughter of the local capitalist kingpin, and hard-rock copper’s daughter Lucy Lockit (a delicious performance from Beverly Rudd).
The other women start weaker, from Rina Fatania’s lisping, leopard-printed Mrs Peachum to Lucy Rivers’ gurning Mrs Goodman. Yet both come into their own: Fatania leading her henpecked gangster husband in an excruciatingly enjoyable morning yoga sequence; Rivers, all musicality, with a soaring widow’s lament.
The second act darkens, from a grotesque parade of unwanted babies to Polly’s troubling aria on the destructive power of truth. Many of the tricks are traditional, from red ribbons unfurling out of bullet wounds, to the gallows looming over the stage. What gives this bite is the malevolent spirit of Punch, the unruly demon of chaos who rules over this netherworld. This is Punch’s world — thanks to Sarah Wright’s exceptional puppetry — grim idiocy, grinning death’s heads, and domestic violence never far below the surface.
There’s plenty of disco-dad rap to update the music, although the opening is almost dirge-like. It’s hardly racy, even if the squealing 17-year-olds behind me seemed to think so. Yet Mike Shepherd’s staging captures all that makes The Beggar’s Opera a classic. Why reinvent the wheel?
