DEAD DOG IN A SUITCASE to Play HOME

This autumn, Cornwall-based international touring company Kneehigh, with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, begin a new tour of Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs), their critically acclaimed radical reworking of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, written by Carl Grose, with a brand new score of live musicby Charles Hazlewood, and directed by Artistic Director Mike Shepherd.

Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) is a twisted morality tale for our times busting with wit, wonder and weirdness, delivered in the way only Kneehigh know how.

The original Beggar's Opera was written in 1728 by John Gay, and was adapted by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in 1928 as The Threepenny Opera. Like its predecessors, Kneehigh's new version is a musical satire that holds a mirror to contemporary society - confronting big business, corrupt institutions, and urban myths. "The story of the dead dog in the suitcase is a 'genuine' story", says writer Carl Grose. "Google it. It's urban myth. It's modern folklore. And that feels like what our Beggar's Opera is, too. If John Gay's was highwaymen, prostitutes and street thieves; ours is about the mythic underbelly of now - corporate conspiracy, hit- men, warped Robin Hood-types, the end of civilisation, dead dogs in suitcases -all combined to create a portrait of a world hanging by a thread, in turns shocking, hilarious, heartfelt and absurd."

A 12-strong company of Kneehigh actor-musicians will bring Grose's script and Hazlewood's music and songs to life. The Designer is Michael Vale, who also designed Kneehigh's Hansel & Gretel which toured to Liverpool Everyman and

Playhouse in 2009. Sarah Wright will be working with Vale as Puppet Designer.

Malcolm Rippeth (Brief Encounter, The Red Shoes) will design the lighting, and Assistant Director Etta Murfitt (Steptoe and Son, The Wild Bride) will choreograph.The production is suitable for ages 14+.

Music Director Charles Hazlewood's score brings the original songs of The Beggar's Opera up to date. He said: "The Beggar's Opera hit an unsuspecting world like a thunderbolt in 1728: an 'opera' about the essential injustice of the world, where rich and poor are corrupt alike, yet the poor go down for it and the rich do not. An 'opera' whose musical foundations seemed entirely borne of the fleshpots and gin palaces, specifically an opera where arias - instead of being art-house confections - were a festering muck-heap of scabrous little ditties belonging to everyone and no-one.

"But down the years, The Beggar's Opera has lost its teeth, not least because these once rapacious little tunes have evaporated from our collective consciousness. When the piece is revived, it is invariably as a charming museum-piece. The score entirely lacks the resonance John Gay endowed it with. Thetunes have lost their context.

"I cannot make these tunes current and ubiquitous again. So my mission is to give them back their bite: by bending, bastardising them, often completely remaking them, and by dressing them in new and unfamiliar musical garb, so that the invigorating power of this piece might make a new mark on our sophisticated, and complacent ears."

"I am delighted to welcome Kneehigh to HOME," says Walter Meierjohann, Artistic Director: Theatre, at HOME. "They are one of my favourite companies working in the UK because they celebrate the theatre art form in their unique style. Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) is a stunning contemporary reworking of The Beggar's Opera with fantastic music and beautiful songs - and has one of the maddest and most poignant endings you will ever see in a theatre!"

Kneehigh enjoyed huge critical success last year with a UK and international tour of Tristan & Yseult. Also on tour in the UK this autumn is their version of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, directed and adapted for the stage by Emma Rice.

After opening in Manchester, the production continues to Birmingham Rep (29 Sept - 3 Oct), Everyman Theatre Cheltenham (13 - 17 Oct), Northern Stage, Newcastle (20 - 24 Oct), Warwick Arts Centre (27 - 31 Oct), West Yorkshire Playhouse (3 - 7 Nov), Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse (10 - 14 Nov), and Shoreditch Town Hall, London (2 - 12 Dec).

Tickets are £29.50 - £18.50; Mon 14 Sept all tickets £10. Concessions, group bookings, and season tickets available. More information at http://homemcr.org/production/dead-dog-in-a-suitcase-and-other-love-songs/ or HOME box office at 0161 200 1500.

Photo Credit: Steve Tanner

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