![]() The shuffling of chairs and tables, silhouettes and other stuff should not compete with the story that goes like this: Mr. Ian Harrison, Brian Knox McGuggan, Nick Fontaine, Andrew Wade and Gord Myren And novel but not working very well are scene changes done in a kind of slow motion. ![]() Newham uses a lot of upstage silhouettes, freezes and mimed action while the real story is happening downstage. Without reading the original again (after 25 years), I can’t say how much has been cut but more could come out. Some other choices were not so fortuitous and I’d have to say this is a work in progress. The only song in this Seven Tyrants Theatre production that is borrowed from Brecht is Mack the Knife and, that song being so iconic, its inclusion was a wise decision. Italian opera was all the rage amongst the well-heeled at the time and it was Gay’s intention to poke fun at it by peopling his ‘opera’ with whores and thieves, the most well-known anti-hero being Macheath who later turns up in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera as Mack The Knife. From The Craftsman, February 3, 1728, “This Week a Dramatick Entertainment has been exhibited at the Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, entitled The Beggar’s Opera, which has met with a general Applause, insomuch that the Waggs say it has made Rich very Gay, and probably will make Gay very Rich.” It ran for 62 performances, the longest run in English theatre history up to that time. Newham has worked from John Gay’s original ‘ballad opera’ that premiered at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1728. Original music is composed and directed by Deorksen, choreography by Catherine Burnett. Off the top, Daniel Deorksen (Beggar) and Phyllis Ho (Player), rigged out like vaudeville clowns tell us, “You’ve never seen anything like this.”Īdapted and directed by David Newham and presented by Seven Tyrants Theatre, this Beggar’s Opera has been in the works for a year and it has been a huge undertaking with a cast of seventeen non-Equity performers (except for Equity member Brian Knox McGuggan) plus four musicians including Deorksen (guitar), Ho (violin), Eugene Burton (upright and electric bass) and Vern Shewchuk (percussion). From the moment the Player and the Beggar, in white-face, black lipstick and bowler hats, soft-shoe it across the Performance Works stage, we know we are in for a very different production of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
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