Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs): 2014
A new Beggar’s Opera
- Writer: Carl Grose
- Music: Charles Hazlewood
- Director: Mike Shepherd
- Lighting designer: Malcolm Rippeth
- Sound designer: Ian Davies
- Designer: Michael Vale
- Choreography: Etta Murfitt
- Puppets: Lyndie Wright
- Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) was made with the LiverpoolEveryman in 2014.
Dead Dog in a Suitcase and other Love songs was made with the Liverpool Everyman in 2014.
"Potential co-producers and venues were nervous saying that their audiences wouldn’t come to a show with that title. We believed that a new audience would come: a Dead Dog in a Suitcase audience. A big thank you to Gemma Bodinetz and Deborah Aydon at the Liverpool Everyman for having faith and giving us such wonderful support.
The play was based on John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera of 1725 which railed against the ruling classes and the disparity between the rich and the poor, and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera of 1929/30. Instead of classical Italian opera, John Gay collected and used the songs of the street and created a beggar's opera. This was a brand new version written by Carl Grose, and composed by Charles Hazlewood. This was our ‘shout’ against the corruption and inequality of the world. To quote Brecht “the world is poor and man’s a shit “
Our version reflected this desire. Dead Dog toured extensively to new audiences nationally and internationally."
- Mike Shepherd
The music of John Gay took opera music, the serious opera, and whilst not mocking it, used it as fuel to comment on the wealthy and to show another side of life. That's what Punch and Judy did: they literally played outside opera houses. That's why it was seen by Pepys outside Covent Garden. It was at Bartholomew Fair, and it was outside Covent Garden. Punch was Italian. He was more Italian than many of the operas probably were and he was taking the mickey out of the opera and making money out of opera-goers. There was this parallel between what Punch had been doing and what John Gay was doing that felt very historically apt in our use of puppets in Dead Dog in a Suitcase.
