Read more on Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) – Synopsis from the Kneehigh Cookbook archive.
Brochure copy:
Kneehigh with Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse
Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs)
A new Beggar’s Opera
Written by Carl Grose
Music by Charles Hazlewood
Directed by Mike Shepherd
The ever inventive Kneehigh return with their blazing new show. Fasten your seat belts; its going to be one hell of a night!
Mayor Goodman has been assassinated. Contract killer Macheath has just married Pretty Polly Peachum and Mr and Mrs Peachum aren’t happy. Not one bit.
Based on the Beggar’s Opera, John Gay’s classic musical satire,Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs)is busting with wit, wonder and weirdness. An extraordinary Kneehigh cast of actor musicians shoot, hoot and shimmy their way through this twisted morality tale of our times…by turns SHOCKING, HILARIOUS, HEARTFELT and ABSURD!
The gorgeous and powerful live score combines trip hop and folk, Renaissance polyphony and psychedelia, and ska, grime and dubstep. echoing Gays original by plundering the sounds of our times.
What the HELL is the world coming to?
This is now, this is it
The world is poor and man’s a shit
The game is rigged, nothing’s truer
Death’s a joke and lifes a sewer!
The show summed up in one sentence:
Kneehighs new version of the Beggars Opera which will be by turns SHOCKING, HILARIOUS, HEARTFELT and ABSURD!
Plot synopsis:
Peachum of Peachum Inc (hair grooming, concrete and tinned fish) wants the mayor dead so he can fill his shoes. Macheath is happy to oblige. But Macs in love with Peachums daughter, Polly, and when Filch lets slip that Polly and Mac are married, Peachum declares war on Macheath.
Mac is captured and imprisoned, betrayed by his own gang. Lucy, chief-of-police Lockits daughter, learns that Mac, the father of her child-to-be, has married Polly. Lucy demands Mac marry her, too. He agrees and Lucy arranges his escape.
But once out, Mac flees Lucy and begs Polly to forgive him. Lucy and Polly join forces. Mac is re-captured. No escape this time. The gallows is built. The city gathers. The Hangman ties a shoddy knot. The bell rings out. The world is about to explode. Does Mac have one last trick up his sleeve?
