Choose these beggars

Give up trying to follow the plot of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera and you're in for a good, hearty night out with the South African company who brought us The Mysteries. With dialogue in Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and English with a thick South African brogue, faithful following of the story is mainly for linguists. But careful attention reveals the tale of the sinister Peachum, who has the highwayman Macheath sentenced to death for marrying his daughter.

Gay's idea was to use popular ballads to show 'the similitude of manners in high and low life' and show the ruling classes as no better than the street-hustling underclasses.

The pleasure, however, lies less in the plot than in Mark Dornford-May's direction, the conducting by Charles Hazlewood and the huge cast. Filling the rickety wooden stage and faded auditorium, the troupe give voice like a Welsh male-voice choir, chorus of Hebrew slaves or tribe of Zulu warriors.

All the music is played by the cast on drums, xylophones and cymbals, with further humming, whistling and stamping. Which is to say nothing of the improvised movement, miming jail houses and horse-drawn carriages.

But it's not all fun and games: nooses looming over the stage keep you in mind of the dark side of the comedy.

Tube: Aldgate East/Tower Hill