Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) review: Kneehigh turn The Beggar's Opera into an uproarious Punch and Judy show

Now, that’s the way to do it. Kneehigh’s anarchic reinvention of The Beggar’s Opera starts with killer-for-hire Macheath watching a Punch and Judy show, an image that perfectly sets the tone for everything to follow. Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) is an end-of-the-pier puppet show writ large, relentlessly cartoonish in its slapstick violence and amorality. It left me grinning from ear to ear.

The bare bones of John Gay’s 1728 satire are intact – Macheath marries the innocent Polly, provokes the ire of her criminal father Peachum, evades the policeman Lockit, etc – but writer Carl Grose turns it into a modern-yet-timeless Guy Ritchie gangster pantomime, with Punch popping up as the devil on Macheath’s shoulder leading him ever further astray. It’s outrageously good fun.

Dim wideboy Peachum (Martin Hyder) is running for mayor, having paid Macheath to bump off the incumbent the day before an election. Macheath shot the mayor’s dog for good measure (“It was a witness!”), and its corpse ends up in one of several identical suitcases, constantly swapped between characters in a farcical game of find-the-lady.

Like the show’s characters, composer Charles Hazlewood will half-inch anything that isn’t nailed down: Peachum’s ode to bribery is pure Ian Dury, while Macheath’s marriage song is a homage to Madness. In an irresistible patchwork score, pastiche melodies come thick and fast – Greensleeves, a bit of Purcell, The Damned. It’s true to the spirit of Gay’s original, which set its satirical ditties to popular tunes of the day.

There are a few standout performances; Dominic Marsh’s Macheath has exactly the right hint of failed idealism beneath his sneering charisma; Georgia Frost finds humour and heart as Peachum’s underling Filch; Rina Fatania’s monstrous turn as the leopardprint-clad Mrs Peachum bursts through the panto barrier and out the other side.

As in every Kneehigh show, however, the individual players are less important than the party atmosphere cooked up by the ensemble. Director Mike Shepherd has been with Kneehigh since its first show, almost 40 years ago; it’s hard to think of another British theatre troupe that has been ploughing its own furrow quite so successfully for so long.

Do some of the broadest jokes fall flat? Yes. Is the social commentary drowned by the raucous spectacle? Yes. Does this matter? Not in the slightest. Watching the Peachums pass ballot-boxes out to the crowd on Thursday, urging them to vote in an absurd farce of an election, there was an electric frisson in the air. In that moment, this felt like the perfect show for what Shepherd, in his programme notes, calls “The Age of Profoundly Stupid”. By the explosive finale, Macheath’s nihilist philosophy had never looked more dangerously seductive.

Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) runs at the Lyric Hammersmith, London W6, until June 15. To book tickets from £18 call 0844 871 2118 or visit Telegraph Tickets.

Then touring to Exeter Northcott, June 18-22; Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, June 25-29; Bristol Old Vic, Julyu 2-13; Galway International Arts Festival, July 16-20. Details: kneehigh.co.uk