STAGE REVIEW : ‘Threepenny Opera’ Worth a Lot More : Theater: UC Irvine’s production gives free rein to the show’s immense theatricality. The youth of the company makes it a knockout.

There are several reasons why UC Irvine’s production of “The Threepenny Opera” is a smashing surprise, and a joy, and why its almost three-hour length seems half that long. One of those reasons is the full-blooded, dynamic English adaptation by Michael Feingold.

In spite of the currently exalted reputation of Bertolt Brecht, who wrote the text, the main reasons in years past for reviving “Threepenny” have been Kurt Weill’s score and the show’s immense theatricality. Brecht’s sociopolitical comments about corruption and the inequality of the classes are expressed as well elsewhere, including John Gay’s original “Beggars Opera” on which “Threepenny” is based.

For many years, the only available English version of Weill’s “The Threepenny Opera” was Marc Blitzstein’s arid adaptation, full of his own agenda, a sort of fanatic 1930s socialism. It is turgid and lightweight, theatrically. Enter Feingold, who breathes into his version buoyant humor and a lightness of spirit that retains Brecht’s social comment but also adds a great amount of cut and dash (which Weill’s score had all along).

The production at UCI is a knockout. The youth of the company helps. The piece was created when Weill and Brecht were young, and it remains a young play. The sparks that fly, under Eli Simon’s effervescent direction, light up the stage. Tom Ruzika designed the lighting, which is painterly and evocative, and it enhances an impressive setting: Randall F. Ewing’s fairly faithful model of London atop the great pillars of the city’s sewers, which in turn become the lairs of the undesirables and unfortunates who people the play.

Simon approaches camp, but not closely enough to be anything but high style. He passes off the script’s intratheatrical devices--dialogue or action that reminds the audience they’re watching a play--with fine-tuned understatement, and he moves his company like figures out of Hogarth.

The further, broader movements created in Donald McKayle’s choreography are inventive, often surprising, always satisfying. And musical director Dennis Castellano has a fine ear for the early Weill, translating his melodies with energy and wit. An added pleasure: The orchestra is in perfect balance with the singers through John Feinstein’s fluid sound design. Elizabeth Novak’s costumes are period perfect, in turn ratty and pompous, rich and raunchy, as needed.

Still, it is, in the final reckoning, the actors who give Feingold’s adaptation its due through their own sense of humor, ribald energy, and their restraint when they easily could have slipped over the edge into caricature. And they sing the pants off the score. Maria Cominis Glaudini, a very funny and intricately conceived Polly Peachum, has a lovely soprano from which she can move seamlessly into a deeper voice, as does Alicia Welch as a raucous and ingratiating Lucy Brown.

Probably the first anti-hero in drama, Macheath (Mack the Knife) is pseudo-heroic to a T and a charming scoundrel in Gregory K. Krosnes’ performance, and Krosnes’ full, rich baritone has just the right patina for his numbers.

Maura Vincent’s engaging heart-of-gold hooker Jenny Diver gives the actress a chance to use her big, belting voice to advantage. The company is rock-solid throughout, from Kelly Perine’s vaudevillian Crook-Finger Jack to Phil Tabor’s frenetic Tiger Brown, but particularly fresh in memory is the slightly fey, nimble, quite otherworldly bit of magic that Brian T. Vernon makes of the Ballad Singer. Vernon’s sly looks at the audience and his deadpan readings hit all the right chords. He adds a tone the equally whimsical Weill would smile at.

‘The Threepenny Opera’

A UCI School of Fine Arts production of the play by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, adapted by Michael Feingold. Directed by Eli Simon. With Brian T. Vernon, Gregory K. Krosnes, Peter Massey, Lynn Watson, John W. Gloria, Maria Cominis Glaudini, Phil Tabor, Maura Vincent, Alicia Welch. Musical direction: Dennis Castellano. Choreography: Donald McKayle. Set: Randall F. Ewing. Lighting: Tom Ruzika. Costumes: Elizabeth Novak. Sound: John Feinstein. Continues today, Wednesday and Friday through Sunday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, UC Irvine, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $12-$15. (714) 854-4646. Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes.