Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) (Oberon Modern Plays)

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Ultimately, with all urban legends of this ilk, they endure for decades because awful things happen in big cities. Everyone’s paranoid, no-one trusts strangers; someone stealing a dead dog isn’t even the most horrible story I’ve heard this year, let alone in 12 years living in London. The ever-inventive Kneehigh return with their blazing new show. Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be one hell of a night! A deer was found tangled in a football net in Berkshire, the RSPCA It was freed and returned to the wild. Finally, director Mike Shepherd highlights a parallel between the story of our antihero Macheath and that of Mr Punch (of Punch and Judy fame) through the use of puppetry, expertly led by Sarah Wright at this performance as chief puppeteer. From Punch, to dogs and crying babies, the puppets serve to remind the audience how ridiculous and pantomimic the actions of the real world characters can seem at times, forcing us to question who the real heroes and villains are in our society.

A compelling piece of theatre… One of the most joyful experiences you’ll have in a theatre this year.”– Haus of PhagOne day, she came to the apartment and found the dog lying dead in the middle of the living room. When she knelt down and examined the dog, she found a big bone lodged in his throat. He must have choked to death on the food she left during the night.

Echoing Gay’s original, the live score plunders the sounds of our times. Trip hop combines with folk, Renaissance polyphony with psychedelia, ska with grime and dubstep to create a gorgeous and powerful musical mix. If there's a moral to be drawn from this strange tale, it’s one of skepticism. Don’t trust kind randoms on the tube, girls called Chelsey, your own friends – and definitely don’t believe everything you hear on a podcast. Together we interrogated John Gay’s original and Bertolt Brecht’s revision: we looked for ways to strengthen what we perceived as weaknesses, we ranted about the world and what makes us furious, and realised we were fired up to make a new Beggar’s Opera for our times.

You don’t realise quite how much this play has grabbed you till the closing moments. Absolutely brilliant. Another fantastic example of the quality theatre that HOME is bringing to Manchester.”– Quiet Man Dave We are in the Age of the Profoundly Stupid and I long, with all my heart and soul, for change and a new age of enlightenment where we can all be global citizens.

Get all the news from your area – as well as features, entertainment, sport and the latest on Lanarkshire’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic – straight to your fingertips, 24/7. When Carl announced the title was to be ‘Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs)’ there were raised eyebrows and pleas for us to change it to something more “accessible” but we held out. It seemed an important statement of intent that he wasn’t simply adapting John Gay’s original but radically re-writing it. Having been fired up we now wanted to leap far away from the comfort zone. As Carl wrote at the time: “….the story of a dead dog in a suitcase is a famous urban myth (google it) It’s a modern folklore and that feels like what our Beggar’s Opera is too. If John Gay’s was highwaymen, prostitutes and street thieves then ours is about the mythic underbelly of NOW-corporate conspiracy, hit men, weirdowarped Robin Hood types, the end of civilisation, dead dogs in suitcases…I mean what the HELL is the world coming to?” All of this and much more has fuelled Carl’s brilliant script. Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) is a dark musical combined with high octane farce and a collection of songs culled from the edge of existence-some angry, some sweet. All combined to create a portrait of a world hanging by a thread. Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) is, as the title suggests, a musical, and the music regularly interspersed throughout the narrative is fitting and borrows from a range of genres; the songs serve to further the narrative and add something to the audience’s understanding of the characters. The music, composed by Charles Hazlewood, is performed live on stage and creates a music concert feel to the piece and allows for a repartee between the band and the actors; indeed some of the band take on roles as part of Mac’s gang and the actors themselves all play an instrument to contribute to the soundscape. In the same spirit of immersion, the set designed by Michael Vale is a fantastic and intricate scaffolding that the actors climb up and down and repurpose to suit the needs of the scene, all done underneath an ever present noose that hangs as a warning and reminder of our characters’ inevitable fate.The body of the dog found in Sheffield will be taken to a vet for further examinations to determine the cause of death and to try to establish the identity of the owner. We are appealing for anyone who has seen someone with this particular holdall within the area around that time. The young woman was horrified and felt very guilty. After all, she had unknowingly been the cause of the dog’s death. She didn’t want to tell the family and ruin their holiday. At the same time, she had to find some way to dispose of the dog because it was beginning to decompose. She wasn’t sure what to do with a dead dog.