‘There’s gender-bending, marital breakdown, piracy, and female solidarity’

Presented by Marie Hamilton and Sharp Teeth Theatre, Polly is a raucous, radical, rallying adaptation of John Gay’s banned sequel to The Beggar’s Opera – complete with techno, tracksuits and palm trees.

Set in a tacky beach resort on a storm-hit island, we meet jilted brides, pregnant murderers, pirates, politicians and power-pop girl bands.

After a sold-out scratch run here in 2018, Polly returns as a Bristol Old Vic Ferment commission, made at Theaterhaus Berlin and The Wardrobe Theatre. Here’s Marie Hamilton to tell Bristol24/7 more.

Tell us briefly the story behind Polly and why it was banned originally.

Polly is an 18th-century romcom, the sequel to John Gay’s smash-hit and still much-beloved The Beggar’s Opera.

The original Polly opens with a character called ‘The Poet’ (a very thinly veiled dramatic personification of John Gay himself) coming onstage and basically saying: “Look, I’m really sorry, this second play isn’t very good, The Beggar’s Opera was a way bigger success than I thought it would be and so everyone’s telling me to do a sequel, but sequels are basically bullshit, it’s all about the money, and I don’t really have any coherent ideas left.”

What an absolutely ridiculous, hilarious way to open a play. I immediately loved it.

Eleanor Nawal as Polly Peachum

Why did you want to recreate it?

Then, reading on, there are these harsh flashes of dark satire which I’m always really drawn to. Gay rips into the European colonisers in the Caribbean at the time and their insatiable greed and cruelty. He makes hilarious, cutting depictions of what we would now probably describe as toxic masculinity and locker-room banter, and mocks the male obsession with war. Then there’s gender-bending, marital breakdown, piracy, and female solidarity.

Plus, over and over the women characters completely outstrip the male ones in astuteness, kindness and decency. At the time it didn’t go down very well, it was banned almost immediately and is really rarely staged. Until now!

How much does your interpretation resemble or move away from Gay’s work?

We’ve diverged from the original, especially in the last section – basically, at a certain point the original gets pretty unceremoniously thrown out of the window. We got to a place where adapting the text was frustrating us so much that we couldn’t go on with it anymore, and it made us ask an important question of theatre in general. Does telling the same old stories over and over again really help us move forward?

Our brilliant composer Ben Osborn has gone full tilt for this show’s musical language too, with Britney, Peaches, and the Beastie Boys inspiring large chunks of the score. Ben is a genius, as is our vocal director Ellie Showering.

Do you have a favourite character?

There are so many. The Poet, played by the brilliant Madeline Shann, for her power and caustic wit; Eleanor Nawal is beautiful as Polly, getting the line between trashy and tragic spot on; Mr Ducat, played by Norma Butikofer, is hilarious, a hideous, Union-Jack-Y-front-wearing Bojo-on-the-beach.

I have six different characters to play, from a murderous, heavily pregnant jilted bride via a Lorraine Kelly-inspired hostess with the most-est to Thick Steve, a very sweet but not very bright pirate… I love them all.

And a favourite song?

My favourite song is probably a really intense rap battle that comes out of the total wreckage of a wedding reception… or one from our pirate boy band, Blazin’ Squid.

Madeline Shann as The Poet

Describe Polly in three words.

Wild, vicious, hilarious.

The opera has been described as feminist. How important is that to you?

Incredibly important. Sometimes I think… oh Lord, there have been so many feminist musicals recently, and over and over we keep getting these all-female casts, and women taking on male lead roles… and maybe people are really bored of that? And maybe we should all just pipe down and be satisfied with where we’ve got to?

But then I read about yet another gang rape as part of a college fraternity initiation, or about a woman being attacked with acid for wearing a skirt that’s short, or for wearing a veil, and I remember that we still live in a country where an average of seven women a month are killed by a current or former partner. And I think… Nah. We do have to keep going.

What do you love about the Wardrobe Theatre? What makes it the perfect place for Polly?

The Wardrobe is the best. It has such an exciting programme- it has so much of the most daring and funny fringe theatre being made at the moment, and its brilliant to be a part of that. The audiences are ace, everyone is always so up for a laugh.

Polly (The Heartbreak Opera) will return to the Wardrobe Theatre when things return to normal post-coronavirus. For updates, visit www.thewardrobetheatre.com

All photos by Chelsey Cliff

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