The Festival and King’s Theatres' recently formed youth company, The Attic Collective, will bring Bertolt Brecht’s subversive tale of lovers, beggars and thieves, The Threepenny Opera with its Weimar cabaret music by Kurt Weill, to the stage of the King’s theatre.
Based on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera that was written in 1728, Brecht and Weill’s popular satire on capitalism, militarism and the middle classes was an instant hit when it premiered in Berlin at the end of August 1928 and heralded the advent of musical theatre.
In bravura musical style, it tells the tale of Macheath ("Mackie," or "Mack the Knife"), a debonair crime lord who returns to London and marries Polly Peachum, the only daughter of Jonathan Peachum, the boss of the city’s beggars. Furious, Peachum plots to have his son-in-law arrested and hanged but Macheath has friends in high places.
This new adaptation from the acclaimed Attic Collective due to be performed in September sets out to show that Mack is one shark who hasn’t lost his bite.
Since its launch in 2016 by the Festival City Theatres Trust, the charitable company that runs Edinburgh’s Festival and King’s Theatres, the Attic Collective has presented Aristophanes’ Lysistrata in January at the King’s Theatre and Jo Clifford’s War in America at the former Royal High School in May. The Threepenny Opera is its third production with director Susan Worsfold and Learning and Participation Coordinator at the Festival City Theatre Trust, Cat Sheridan. They are joined on this production by Simon Goldring, musical director, pianist, conductor and arranger.
Looks like the Attic Collective will stop us from wearying post Festival!
Friday 15 & Saturday 16 September 2017 Evenings 7.30pm; Matinee Saturday 2.30pm