Review: Dead Dog in a Suitcase

Towards the end of Dead Dog in a Suitcase, a character appears on stage with a Kalashnikov. Pointing it at the audience, she delivers an angry speech before shooting up the theatre.

A week ago this would have been powerful enough. Post-Paris, it causes the audience to experience a whole new level of tension and even fear in an already overwhelmingly apocalyptic finale. This production may well leave you more shell-shocked than you have ever left a theatre before. It is also brilliant.

Kneehigh’s radical modern reworking of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera provides a frantic adrenaline rush through a tequila-soaked urban netherworld in which everyone is flawed and most people are wicked. As with Gay’s original – and Brecht’s version The Threepenny Opera – this is a bleak celebration of low life, corruption and betrayal, all manifested most successfully by the show’s anti-hero, the hired killer Macheath.

As a musical, Dead Dog… delivers its desolate commentary on the human condition in a highly theatrical, cartoonish style of rich farce. It does so against a dense aural landscape which combines a live soundtrack with an array of musical styles, ranging from Billie Holliday through Ian Dury to death metal delivered through a megaphone. The overall effect is, frankly, insane: a cacophony of bright colours, heightened performances and fantastic puppetry.

Yet the narrative is never lost, as the story rattles along clearly and comprehensibly. It’s a simple tale of the rather dim-witted businessman Peachum (Martin Hyder) and his rancidly corrupt wife (a bravura comedy performance by Rina Fatania) seeking to seize power in their unnamed city by commissioning the assassination of the mayor – and the eponymous dog – by Macheath, and the latter’s struggles to escape both the consequences and the lure of his life of crime and debauchery (“It’s hard to walk out on wickedness when you’re the one supplying it”).

But strung around the simple story and the big laughs is a bleak superstructure of morality, a critique of a scruple-free society in which everyone is only interested in looking after number one. There are no good people here – even the virginal Polly Peachum (Angela Hardie) is ultimately reduced to the universal emotions of violent anger and bleak despair through the lies and deceit of her parents and her lover Macheath.

Although apparently just a freak show of bad people, Dead Dog’s message of the triumph of corrupt corporate power and the emptiness of the amoral soul still strikes some worrying chords with a present-day audience.

As usual, Kneehigh’s production achieves a level of inventiveness and variety that makes it the touchstone of all the best things that only live theatre can achieve. Totally non-realistic in both its staging and its content, it teases the audience into suspending their disbelief so effectively that everything nonetheless seems as real as the person next to you.

And, as the audience is drawn in by the broad comedy, snappy asides and fast-paced tale of a lovable rogue, the final descent into total nihilistic chaos is both fitting and totally unexpected: as shocking as a bucket of iced water and more powerful than any megabuck cinema blockbuster can achieve. It’s shows like this that make going to the theatre unique.

Dead Dog in a Suitcase continues at Bristol Old Vic until Saturday, November 21. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/deaddog.html