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ACT I

Three criminals – Begbick, Fatty and Trinity Moses – are fleeing arrest. When their lorry breaks down and they can go no further, they decide to found a new city, Mahagonny, with the purpose of making money.

Ìý

Prostitutes, including Jenny, arrive in Mahagonny. Fatty and Moses persuade men to leave behind the drudgery of the old cities and move to the new dream town. Four friends who have made their fortunes in Alaska – Jimmy, Jack, Bill and Joe – travel to Mahagonny in search of gambling, women and cheap drink. Begbick offers her girls to the new arrivals at a discount and Jimmy buys Jenny, who asks for detailed instructions about how he would like her to be.

Ìý

Mahagonny’s economy is collapsing as prices fall. Begbick, Fatty and Moses resolve that they must make more money from new arrivals.Ìý Jimmy is not satisfied with the comforts on offer in Mahagonny. He is fed up with rules and regulations. Convinced there should be more to life, he tries to leave Mahagonny.

Ìý

His friends persuade him to stay and take him back to a piano bar. Spurred on by the memory of what he suffered in Alaska to earn his money, he flares up with rage against Mahagonny’s emptiness. ÌýA hurricane is heading towards Mahagonny and the people cower in fear. Jimmy defies the storm, claiming that people are just as destructive as hurricanes and so there is no reason to be afraid. He challenges Begbick to rip up her rules and regulations; as the hurricane approaches he convinces everyone that the real route to happiness would be for nothing to be forbidden.

Ìý

ACT II

Miraculously spared from the hurricane, Mahagonny is now a city where everything is permitted. The people eat, make love, fight and drink to excess. After Jack has eaten himself to death, Joe enters a prize fight against Trinity Moses. Jimmy, a loyal friend, bets on Joe winning. When Moses kills Joe, Jimmy loses all his money.

Ìý

Jimmy buys drinks for everyone. When Begbick demands that he pay the bill, Jenny and Bill refuse to help him and Jimmy is arrested.

Ìý

ACT III

Jimmy prays that the dawn, which will herald his trial, will never arrive. Tickets are sold for the court. The first defendant, a murderer called Toby Higgins, bribes the court and is acquitted. Jimmy is tried for causing the death of his friend Joe, disturbing the peace, seducing Jenny, singing popular songs and failing to pay his bar bill.

Ìý

Unable to bribe the court, he is found guilty and, for the most heinous of his crimes, that of having no money, Begbick sentences him to death. A crowd watches Jimmy’s farewell to Jenny. He passes Jenny into the care of his friend Bill and reminds those present of the existence of God. The people act the play of ‘God came to Mahagonny’: God condemns the town but is shouted down by its people, who tell him that they cannot be sent to Hell as they are there already. Jimmy is executed. Conflicting protests take over Mahagonny, while Jimmy’s relics are paraded.

John Fulljames