Faithfull Takes Turn as Chanteuse : Pop music review: The singer’s one-woman tribute to Kurt Weill lacks requisite style and dramatic depth.

It must have seemed like a good idea at first--Marianne Faithfull singing songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, among other Weill collaborators. Contemporary disillusionment meets 1920s Weimar decadence. Post-counterculture chanteuse as “Threepenny Opera’s” Pirate Jenny. Lotte Lenya and Marlene Dietrich had already demonstrated that you don’t necessarily need much of a voice to interpret Weill.

Perfect. Even Faithfull’s most avid admirers would be hard put to describe her raspy contralto as anything approaching vocal splendor.

But as Faithfull launched into her one-woman Weill tribute, accompanied by pianist Paul Trueblood, at the Henry Fonda Theatre on Saturday night with a grating deconstruction of “Moon of Alabama,” you wondered why someone--some good friend, perhaps--somewhere along the way, hadn’t advised: “You really shouldn’t do this.”

The Weill-Brecht songs can indeed be done in a spoken-sung manner in which melody can be subservient to the thrust of the words--something no one ever did better than Lenya. Nor do the songs demand an especially artful technique. Brecht’s lyrics, with their bloody visions of murder, sex and violence, in fact, rely on a rejection of artfulness.

Sound like rock ‘n’ roll? Up to a point. And if there was any relevant logic in Faithfull’s decision to do this material it was probably because she saw many legitimate parallels between the Brecht lyrics and her own life as a public projection of the Trinity of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

But the Weill/Brecht songs require something more than sung-spoken words, a lack of artfulness and a taste for decadent imagery. They require style, dramatic depth and musical understanding--almost none of which were present in Faithfull’s misinformed renderings of some of the finest theater music every written.

Works such as “Surabaya Johnny” and “Alabama Song” demand equal portions of singing and acting, their brief but soaring melodies contrasting with rueful passages of dialogue. Faithfull made little distinction between the two, singing the melodies with an abrasive sound that undercut their musical qualities and delivering the dialogue with a declamatory aggression that denied its inner anguish.

Her versions of “Falling in Love Again” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” were more appealing, in part because of a sardonic, Dietrich-like reading of the former, and, for once, a real comprehension of the Weill musical method in the latter.

Visually, Faithfull looked right for the part of a Weill/Brecht interpreter, with spiked heels and a long, slit-to-the-hip black dress. Also, the enthusiastic audience appeared willing to go for the image, regardless of the quality of the music.

Faithfull’s authentic talents didn’t emerge until the closing numbers of the show, when she finally turned to perceptive versions of a Harry Nilsson tune and an original, “She,” from her own new album.

A few more of those would have made for a far more entertaining evening.