Remember the Barbra Streisand screwball
comedy
What’s Up, Doc?, with
four or five identical valises being endlessly switched and
re-switched? I’m sure Carl Grose does. His new version of
The Beggar’s Opera includes almost
as much luggage-related confusion. One of the items in question
contains the titular mutt, which its owner the mayor had been taking
for walkies when both were assassinated; “[The dog] was a witness,”
explains Macheath (Dominic Marsh) later.
Mac here is less a criminal mastermind in his own right than a villain
for hire, in this instance by pilchards-to-concrete mogul Les Peachum
who wants the mayoralty for himself. The remainder of the basic set-up
is familiar: chief of police Lockit is under Peachum’s thumb, and the
daughters of each are under Macheath’s, er, influence. As in every
other version of the story from John Gay’s original to Brecht and
Weill’s
Threepenny
incarnation, the world is irredeemably corrupt and self-serving. Put it
this way: Grose’s most reliable commentator is a Mr Punch puppet that
periodically pops up from an old-fashioned Punch & Judy booth.
There is not much room here for the decorous strain of
tristesse which has run through
many re-tellings of classic tales by the Kneehigh company in recent
years. Even the wackiest moments, such as Macheath dropping in for a
spot of relaxation at what appears to be an S&M bordello, or his
later being menaced by a Cabbage Patch-esque gang of puppet babies he
has sired on all the club’s whores, have an inescapable undertow of
savagery. Perhaps it is significant that this bleaker affair is
directed not by Kneehigh’s current supremo Emma Rice but by the
company’s founder Mike Shepherd.
The tone of the material trumps that of the company. Another trait this
version has in common with others is that it feels over-protracted, not
fatally but just enough to drag a little. Charles Hazlewood’s score,
played principally by the cast, takes off from funereal beginnings to
embrace rap, disco, hardcore, ska and even dub. However, the ascending
musical energy is not sufficient to counteract an absence of narrative
cohesion. Between the original story of Macheath bamboozling everyone
and the new dimensions of Peachum’s power-grab and the inconclusively
handled suitcase business, it is as if the characters are trying to hit
several different sets of onstage marks at once. Inevitably, things
flap about a bit. Credit where it’s due, though: the most vigorous and
compelling flapping regularly comes from the expansive,
leopardskin-clad figure of Rina Fatania as Mrs Peachum, who is clearly
the criminal brains of the household.
How can the tale’s standard ending, with Macheath escaping the gallows
to rollick another day, work in this more sombre landscape? In the
event, Grose and Shepherd pull it all together at the last, managing
both to pay lip-service to this narrative convention and to engineer a
satisfyingly grim conclusion of their own, so cataclysmic that the cast
have to quieten the audience down for a minor-key coda. That’s the way
to do it.
Written for the Financial
Times.