Peachum: the distinctive name gives it away. Mid Wales Opera’s new production is a cheeky take on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. If Weill and Brecht based their Threepenny Opera on it, then, reasoned MWO’s Richard Studer, he could have fun too. Studer’s original was a one-woman show spotlighting the lady – though she’s no lady, more madam and scheming murderess – but became a three-hander with daughter Polly Peachum (a fetching portrayal by Alys Mererid Roberts) and servant Filch (Johnny Herford), who steals the authorial framing.
What? No Macheath? Afficionados of Gay and Weill will be horrified. Yet the highwayman – the lovable rogue secretly married to Polly and in thieving league with her father – manages to be a presence throughout, thanks to the gibbet and noose standing ready to hang him. He’s clearly the mainstay of Polly’s existence.
As Studer made free with the plot, so his fellow artistic director Jonathan Lyness felt able to do likewise with what, as one of the earliest ballad operas, was a bit of a creative free-for-all. The wit and ingenuity of Lyness’s music, scored for piano, violin, bassoon and percussion, allows it to flow in and out of the spoken dialogue with consummate ease.
Still full of sharp social comment – albeit some of Gay’s bons mots occasionally lost in the Irish inflections of Carolyn Dobbin’s Mrs P – what is missing is Gay’s element of biting political satire. But it’s slickly enjoyable, with the audience becoming the final court of appeal.