I absolutely loved this. I imagine it would be enhanced by knowing the tunes to the sung sections of the script, but the overall story had me giggling to myself in a lot of places. It's easy enough to see how this became so popular as a show (according to the notes it was played as a favorite by many different companies over the years) as it is accessible, funny and "stars" the characters normally seen as extras.
It's a little bit hard to comment on the satirical nature of the play, since I'm not all that familiar with the Italian Opera it was meant to send up, but even without such context I think most of the jokes hit home even today. The characters though, while "commoners" fulfil the same sort of types as any courtly setting in Shakespeare. Peachum takes the part of king, his daughter that same "wayward heir" type I keep coming back to (though, less so here - she intends to marry someone of her own chosing, which her parents don't seem to approve. Naturally he turns out to be a womaniser and a bit of a douche, but we don't know that to start with.
Even here, in a satirical comedy, there are long speeches in places... and of course, all of them spoken by men. Once again I find myself bemoaning the lack of really good female audition-length monologues just about anywhere.
I'm cutting this entry a little short as it's very late and I'm falling asleep at the wheel, as it were.
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