The Beggar's Opera

Mr. Peachum is a colorful figure in London's underworld: on one hand, he operates a private security service that delivers thieves to the police, while on the other hand, he only hands over those thieves who are not profitable enough for him, as Peachum himself is London's biggest fence, or black market dealer of stolen goods. When Jonathan Peachum hears that his beloved daughter Polly has secretly married the highwayman Macheath, a war breaks out in the underworld. Peachum wants to get Macheath to the gallows as quickly as possible, and his daughter is supposed to collect the bounty, but she is torn between her love for her parents and her romantic feelings for the daring Macheath.

Two hundred years before Bertolt Brecht, John Gay wrote his scandalous, groundbreaking, and imagination-defying Beggar's Opera. Susanne Lietzow and Gilbert Handler reinterpret this eternally relevant satire on the underworld, which holds a mirror up to the bourgeoisie.