Festival Opera
The Beggar’s Opera
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Five stars
Keith Bruce
AT ONCE completely coherent on its own terms, and kaleidoscopically multi-layered, with cultural references that effortlessly span over three centuries, Robert Carsen’s Theatre des Bouffes du Nord staging of John Gay’s “ballad opera”, with onstage music by William Christie’s baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants, is the sort of show you could watch multiple times and find new details to marvel and chuckle at.
From the very start, as the cast burst out of James Brandily’s cardboard box city set, there is visual pun on “looting” and “lute-ing” and that sort of plundering threads all the way through the production. There’s a Donald Trump hand gesture, a direct quote from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses, gags about product-placement in contemporary film and nods to the era of silent movies, a quintet of Spice-ish Girls, pastiche of everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Hamilton hip-hop, and a final tableau that mimics Leonardo’s Last Supper. Possibly less deliberate is the most pivotal use of a pool table since the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch. Nothing is sacred, or safe, and that is surely the message of the original work – probably best known via Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera.
Superb though the recent London National Theatre version of that show was, this is much more of-the-moment, full of references to the UK’s current wretched political situation, with some specifically local details added in for the local Edinburgh audience as well. The language is ripe, but never gratuitously so, and it is very funny, even if you daren’t laugh too long at one thing for fear of missing the next.
The instrumentalists are marvellous, and the music works as fittingly as Weill’s to the tale – nothing says “doomed romance” or “blind lust” as eloquently as a quasi-Elizabethan tune – and although the singing of the cast is patchy, it works exactly as the sprechgesang of the Threepenny Opera does. Having a very pretty Macheath in Benjamin Purkiss works a treat, while Beverley Klein makes Mrs Peachum such a pivotal character it redresses some of the misogyny that is inherent in the work.
Further performances to Sunday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here