A Wife Too Many

Our Final Production for 2010

Background to The Beggar’s Opera.

This play was written by John Gay in the early decades of the seventeenth century. It was a satire against both the class system of the time and the sometimes pompous musical establishment. Its setting was among the lowest element of society, not the aristocracy. It used popular tunes of the time, not music specifically written, like in opera or operetta. At the time it was a sensation for its sexuality and its mischievous fun at the expense of the ruling classes.

The protagonists are petty criminals, gangsters and ladies of dubious reputation, and they sing the songs popular in the streets of the big cities. The play has been an influence down the years. Berthold Brecht, the great German playwright of the early and middle twentieth century, rewrote it as The Threepenny Opera with great music by Kurt Weill. Macheath, the highwayman, becomes Mack the Knife, often played like a Chicago gangster of the 1930s.

The play has inspired other musicians and writers to reinterpret the play in other forms and set in other times, including a post apocalyptic future called Vanishing Point. The Sydney Theatre Company in 2008 produced The Convicts’ Opera set on a convict ship bound for Australia. The version described below arose from a reading after a Play Reading night, at our theatre, where we all agreed it had great comic potential and so I, rather presumptuously followed Brecht’s footsteps and wrote another version.

One Wife Too Many

The setting is London about the middle of the nineteenth century in the foggy alleys and lanes of London – the sorts of places that Dickens wrote about in Bleak House and Oliver Twist. We meet the locals - pickpockets, thieves, house breakers and swindlers who are either under the patronage of Jonathan Peachum, the local fence and gang leader, or are footpads under the leadership of Captain Macheath, the highwayman. Men named Jemmy Twitcher, Crook-fingered Jack or Ben Budge, Nimming Ned and Harry Paddington, are of all ages and expertise.

Ezekiel Filch, a young man with an oily, sneaky manner, assists Peachum. Peachum has a wife, a jolly sort of woman who loves drink and cards and the company of young men, as well as a daughter, pretty Polly, who is hopelessly in love with Macheath. Peachum’s partner in crime is the warden of Newgate Prison, Silas Lockit, and together the two run all the rackets and corruptions in the underworld of London town. They know all the crooked judges and the corrupt politicians.

They can sell a friend or an enemy to the law without qualms or as easily transmute a hanging into transportation or a pardon. Lucy Lockit, Silas’s daughter, has already fallen victim to the charms of the handsome and charismatic Macheath. Once Peachum learns that Macheath has designs on Polly too, they set out to betray him. The two young women have no scruples in their desire to win Macheath, and there is a confrontation between the two of them in Macheath’s cell that shows there is no depths to which a woman in love will not go. Macheath’s downfall is of course, through women, and the women of the night, like Sally Vixen, Sukey Tawdry, Dolly Trull, Betty Doxy, Peggy Coaxer and Jenny Diver, are a rumbustious and lively lot of all ages, shapes and dispositions.

Mrs Diana Trapes, an older woman of great distinction and manner, and drinking companion of Lockit and Peachum, keeps them in bright gowns, hats and cloaks, to encourage custom.

The dialogue and lyrics have been modernised and the music, like the original, uses contemporary tunes - of the twentieth century, tunes many will be familiar with, though the words have been changed. Sarah Turvey has chosen her music very well, and I am sure the music will be a great part of the production. If we can find enough people to have some fun interpreting these larger than life characters, the production will be a lot of fun.

For any further details or questions, please ring me on 4421 0829. The finished script will be available in late July.

-          Lyn Harnwell

Last changed: 22nd July, 2010 at 12:42 PM