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THE THREEPENNY OPERA 109
this new version, which is as unlike the famous revival with Lovat Fraser decorations some years back as could be imagined. Whilst there will be many admirers of the latter who will deplore such filching from this celebrated operetta and resent this complete redressing and resetting, personally I find it singularly refreshing and less arts-and-craftsish than the Lyric production. Instead of an eighteenth-century London, we have substituted a most delightful, fantastic underworld set in a district approximating to Soho in the 'nineties, which is close to a romantically conceived dockland, with gay-life cafes and the most naughty yet highly diverting houses of ill-repute.
Any reader familiar with Pabst's work will at once appreciate what admirable scope such an environment gives for his love of darkly-lit, macabre settings, and for curious twists of vice and virtue. It can well be imagined how he delights in showing the romantic philanderings of Mackie Messer, the new Macheath, who is the captain of the so-called gang of London Apaches, and how Pabst portrays for our joyous entertainment the scandalous exploits of this charming hero.
At the opening of the film, Mackie falls in love at first sight with Polly Peachum, the beautiful and spirited daughter of the King of the Beggars, and marries her out of hand at a sumptuous wedding feast staged by his gang out of stolen goods in Mackie's sinister underground headquarters. When the wedding night is over, Polly steals home and breaks the news to her irate parents, who promptly declare that she must divorce her newly-wed husband. Polly, of course, refuses to permit this, and Peachum goes to