This 'Threepenny' needs a sharper Mack the Knife

There's never really a wrong time to produce

The Threepenny Opera

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In prosperous years, you get Macheath in the form of Milken and Madoff, and these days, well, just imagine how Beggar King Peachum would fare with a 10 percent unemployment rate. Even Bertolt Brecht counted it as "one of the few German repertoire pieces, plays which can more or less be done at any time."

The Arden Theatre's current version uses a 1994 translation by Robert MacDonald and Jeremy Sams, and back in 1997, the Wilma Theater chose Michael Feingold's. The thing is, not all Threepennies are created equal, and the best bring out the worst in a company. Director Terrence Nolan has more of an affinity for sunlight than darkness, and it shows here, with a production that aims to please, its "alienation effect" mostly due to the lack of bite in that shark's pretty teeth.

Despite a strong supporting cast, Macheath's knife, as wielded by Terence Archie, is rather dull. He seems like a nice enough guy, which is just the trouble. Despite flashing a huge pair of pumped-up guns and a tight black wife-beater T-shirt, he's no match for Victoria Frings' silk-over-steel Polly Peachum, and certainly not the smooth criminal who could make her "proud to hang my head low," as she croons in "Barbara's Song."

Anthony Lawton - reprising his Wilma role as corrupt cop Tiger Brown with just the right amount of sneering artifice and menace - and Scott Greer, as a cigar-chomping, Barnum-esque Peachum, fare far better. And in her bit part as prostitute Betty, Amanda Schoonover, sloppy, nodding, and sprawled across the boards - the only working girl who doesn't look like a freshly showered executive escort - is more of an attention-getter than Rachel Wallace's adequate, but uninteresting Jenny, and for all the right (i.e., Brechtian) reasons.

Tom Gleeson's set and Thom Weaver's lighting try too hard to fake what doesn't call for fakery. If the actors perform on exposed scaffolding, and Jorge Cousineau's video projection (one of the production's most effective design elements, particularly his deus ex machina moment, which I won't ruin) works just fine against a curtain, then why also build a brick wall?

At least Eric Ebbenga's orchestra evokes all of Kurt Weill's seedy grandeur (though their performances falter, this cast can carry a tune - collectively and solo), even if Nolen and company aren't quite up to the challenge.