Published in The Guardian
The Beggar's Opera
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
2 out of 5
You have a great idea. You imagine John Gay's 18th-century satire could be set in some cyberpunk future, where the highwayman Macheath is now a "super-thief" at large in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. It would be an oversexed society in which the outlaw's girlfriends, with their nostalgic obsession for early 21st-century designer gear, would be motivated by lust, while the older generation would care only for money. At the age of 121, Madonna would be the last surviving celebrity from the time of the global floods, and the world would have descended into dog-eat-dog violence.
You realise that instead of using the musical arrangements of Johann Pepusch or Benjamin Britten, you could bring in Glasgow's A Band Called Quinn for an authentically grungy blast of Goldfrapp-style electro-pop. And you know designer Kai Fischer would dream up a stunning set, a literal underworld beneath a root-strewn ceiling with a large skylight through which you could see Finn Ross's comic-book animations. It would be bold, adventurous and of-the-moment, and would break the rep theatre routine for the Royal Lyceum as it launched its autumn season.
Indeed, Matthew Lenton's hugely ambitious production for Vanishing Point achieves all of these things – but entirely at the expense of the play.
The actors can't be blamed for looking lost, and not only because many are performing from behind gas masks or up to their ankles in sand. It's also because the black-and-white certainties of the production's Bladerunner world leave no room for characterisation, making most of them look like hammy pantomime villains.
They are not helped by an updated script that sets out to be witty but comes across as plain vulgar: Macheath, says one, is "an absolute fucking turn-on". This is a production that, despite ticking all the fashionable boxes, has nothing to say about today.
© Mark Fisher 2009
The Beggar's Opera
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
2 out of 5
You have a great idea. You imagine John Gay's 18th-century satire could be set in some cyberpunk future, where the highwayman Macheath is now a "super-thief" at large in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. It would be an oversexed society in which the outlaw's girlfriends, with their nostalgic obsession for early 21st-century designer gear, would be motivated by lust, while the older generation would care only for money. At the age of 121, Madonna would be the last surviving celebrity from the time of the global floods, and the world would have descended into dog-eat-dog violence.
You realise that instead of using the musical arrangements of Johann Pepusch or Benjamin Britten, you could bring in Glasgow's A Band Called Quinn for an authentically grungy blast of Goldfrapp-style electro-pop. And you know designer Kai Fischer would dream up a stunning set, a literal underworld beneath a root-strewn ceiling with a large skylight through which you could see Finn Ross's comic-book animations. It would be bold, adventurous and of-the-moment, and would break the rep theatre routine for the Royal Lyceum as it launched its autumn season.
Indeed, Matthew Lenton's hugely ambitious production for Vanishing Point achieves all of these things – but entirely at the expense of the play.
The actors can't be blamed for looking lost, and not only because many are performing from behind gas masks or up to their ankles in sand. It's also because the black-and-white certainties of the production's Bladerunner world leave no room for characterisation, making most of them look like hammy pantomime villains.
They are not helped by an updated script that sets out to be witty but comes across as plain vulgar: Macheath, says one, is "an absolute fucking turn-on". This is a production that, despite ticking all the fashionable boxes, has nothing to say about today.
© Mark Fisher 2009
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