The year is 2008 and Brecht’s most performed satire on bourgeois capitalist society is placed firmly in a slightly skewed Capital of Culture. No longer roaming the streets of Soho but the back alleys of Liverpool, Macheath, better known as Mac the Knife, is the undoubted king of the underworld.


Mac marries Polly Peachum. However, her father who controls all the beggars of Liverpool, is none too pleased with the arrangement and organsises to have Macheath arrested and hanged. His plans are hampered though as Mac is old friends with the local chief of police, Tiger Brown, who is preparing for an imminent visit from the Queen. This opera “by beggars for beggars” asks the central and highly political question, "Who is the bigger criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?"

Written by Bertolt Brecht after Elizabeth Hauptmann’s translation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
Music by Kurt Weill.
Translation by Ralph Manheim/John Willett & lyric translation by Jeremy Sams.
Music direction by Eric Blakemore.
Assistant direction by Eric Blakemore and Andy Byron.
Directed by Dan Meigh and Iona Farley.