Beggars’ banquet of riches
Almost three centuries on from its creation, The Beggar’s Opera is still as relevant, meaningful and adaptable as ever, writes Susan Mansfield
Few works of theatre from the 18th century are performed today, but The Beggar’s Opera is an important exception. John Gay’s satirical masterpiece has been reinvented many times in the 290 years since it was first performed, finding fresh life in many political contexts: Brecht and Weill reworked it as The Threepenny Opera in Weimar Germany; Václav Havel created an antisoviet version in Czechoslovakia in 1976; and the following year, Wole Soyinka remade it in Nigeria.
Robert Carsen, who directs the version that will be performed at Edinburgh International Festival as part of a season of work from Paris’ Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, believes it’s also a play for our time. His production sets the show in contemporary London, while aiming to capture the subversive energy of Gay’s original. He says: “People who are very familiar with the piece will know and recognise their good friend, but see him in new clothes.”
His cast of beggars and pickpockets are the drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes of London today; the setting is a warehouse full of stolen goods. Gay’s text has been updated to include references to contemporary politics and will be brought to life not by opera singers but by a young cast of singers and dancers from West End musicals, in keeping with the fact that, in place of arias and recitative, Gay used the popular songs of the day – albeit with new words.
“It could be called the first musical comedy,” Carsen says. “It’s a fast-moving satirical comedy to which Gay added these folk songs – Irish, Scottish and English – songs everyone would have known. It’s the first jukebox musical. When we started to work on it, Bill [music director William Christie] and I had the same feeling, that we should cast this as it was first written, with actors who were singers, rather than opera singers. They’re having a lot of fun with it, and they have the energy to put across the angry and slightly tough message that is in the show. It was a very anarchic piece for its time, a scathing critique of society.”
Gay’s play, with its cast of exuberant lowlifes, was sharply satirical, both of Italian opera that had been in vogue, and of the political regime of the time. Gay was part of the same literary circle as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, whose scabrous wit attacked the politicians of the day, particularly Robert Walpole, now regarded as Britain’s first de facto prime minister.
At the same time, society was gripped by salacious tales from the criminal underclasses. Thief taker Jonathan Wild, gentleman highwayman Claude Duval, andjacksheppard–famousforhisprison escapes – were minor celebrities; there are overtones of all three in the characters in The Beggar’s Opera. While Carsen’s production stops short of drawing direct parallels with contemporary figures, either in politics or crime, it’s not hard to make one’s own associations.
However, there is nothing so quaint here as honour among thieves. In Gay’s play everyone is out for themselves. The gangmaster, Peachum, rakes in money from his criminal associates while shopping them (for more money) to a corrupt jailer. When he discovers, to his horror, that his daughter Polly has married dashing highwayman Macheath, he immediately plots to have him captured and hanged so he can pocket his cash.
“Morality is turned on its head,” says Carsen. “One song is about how every single man rips off every other man, all you want is to get the most money you can for yourself. It’s very much a piece for our time. It makes us laugh, but the laughter not entirely comfortable. The satire was hilarious to people at the time, but, however piquant and potent those references, they don’t mean much to us today. It’s important to translate that, while keeping the essence of the piece.”
Dramaturg Ian Burton adds: “The politics of the original are extraordinary, it constantly undermines the audience. You can’t say, ‘Ah, I get it,’ find a key that unlocks the whole thing. It’s a very brilliantpieceandwehavehadtokeepour wits about us trying to find contemporary equivalents.” The Beggar’s first performed in Lincoln’s in 1728 and was an overnig running for a near-unprec nights.
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