Morag Fullerton’s Mack The Knife makes a welcome return to stages in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Three years ago, just before Britain’s momentous referendum on EU membership, I made my usual weekly journey to Glasgow to catch the latest Play, Pie and Pint lunchtime show, and found myself transported back to another great turning-point in European history. In Morag Fullarton’s new play with songs, the year was 1928, and the city was Berlin. A group of artists had gathered to put on a show, but rehearsals were proving chaotic, with only the writer – the Marxist poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht – showing any confidence that a show would finally emerge. The producer was demanding popular entertainment where Brecht was better known for political radicalism; the title kept changing, cast members kept leaving, and the composer Kurt Weill and his wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, were confused to the point of despair.