‘Threepenny’ Puts Human Face on Brecht

Bertolt Brecht would probably take exception to even the hints of an appeal to compassionate sensibilities--like casting children as the beggars--in Heidi Helen Davis’ staging of his sardonic masterpiece “The Threepenny Opera” at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. After all, Brecht sacrificed feelings to intellectual detachment in his Epic Theater style, trying to keep the implicit call to political action against bourgeois oppression undiluted by cathartic release. What a Commie grouch.

But even though Davis aims for a more complex viewing experience in which thought and feeling are not necessarily in opposition, she’s far too attentive and intelligent a reader of Marc Blitzstein’s dazzling 1954 adaptation to wander far afield from the text. Primarily, she injects humanity by ratcheting up the humor and satire already present in this clinically dissected story of suave London crime lord Macheath (a.k.a. Mack the Knife).

Tall, angular Patrick O’Connell fills the role superbly, shading his smooth, seductive wiles with underlying menace as he glides shark-like through a den of thievery, prostitution and corruption. And that’s just the police station.

A 1936 resetting makes the colloquialisms seem less out of place than in the original Victorian time frame. But the conceit, with its implicit specter of Hitler’s rise, probably plays a bigger part in the performers’ back stories than the audience’s perceptions. Macheath’s implacable nemesis, Peachum--brilliantly played by Aled Davies--is still purely Dickensian in his cynical control of London’s begging franchises, in concert with his equally conniving wife (feisty Barbara Tarbuck).

Strong performances animate the trio of ladies who are Macheath’s passion and his ultimate undoing--his newly corrupted bride Polly (Melora Marshall), a previous wife (Leslie Hicks) he never bothered to divorce and Jenny (Ellen Geer), the jaded prostitute who betrays him.

While the production fares quite well in dramatic terms, Kurt Weill’s brilliant songs lose some of their luster to the venue’s poor outdoor acoustics, which thin even the strongest singing voices. Trimming Blitzstein’s eight-piece orchestration to solo piano accompaniment by music director Greg Hilfman is a sensible concession, but the startling tonalities and garish textures in Weill’s score are sorely missed.

* “The Threepenny Opera,” Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Saturdays, 8 p.m., through Sept. 14; Sundays, 7:30 p.m., through Aug. 4. $15. (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.