Walterdale cast strong in Threepenny Opera

German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera is not the easiest play to stage, and the Walterdale Playhouse deserves a pat on the back for its fearlessness in attempting a remount.

Running until Saturday, April 16, it was originally written in the 1920s as a political satire on a bloated society about to implode. In a fractured manner, the play strikes a blow for the dregs of society.

Set on London’s seedy docks and dark alleys, it is a commentary on 20th century capitalism and takes place around the eve of Queen Victoria’s coronation. This is a world where the wealthy middle class and powerful fill their pockets on the scavenging of others. It is a dog-eat-dog, human-eat-human world.

The play opens on a night of evil as a mysterious figure remorselessly slits the throat of a dock prostitute. As she floats to the ground in death, crowds gather to hear the haunting tale of Mack the Knife, a song later popularized by the jazz singer Bobby Darin.

Yes, central to the plot is the murdering, stealing, raping Macheath, a prince of thieves in a stench-filled corrupt London. Apart from his sex appeal to the ladies, Mack has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Like any celebrity gangster, his charisma stems from power rather than personality. And John Evans plays him with a putrid oiliness that makes you want to shower.

Macheath has a loose libido and is about to take the semi-virginal, crotch-grabbing Polly Peachum (Kara Chamberlain) as one of his many “wives.” His other main squeezes are the claw-displaying, kittenish Lucy Brown (Lauren Kneteman) and the vampy Jenny (Charity Principe), a queen among whores.

Pretty Polly wins. She has excellent connections. Her father is Mr. Peachum, King of the Beggars, another villain with a tight grip on the vagrant population with fingers in many pies.

However, both Mr. Peachum (Gerald Mason) and Mrs. Peachum (Kristen Finlay), object to Polly’s choice and devise a sly plan to have Mack captured by the police and hung. Mason, last seen in Lend Me a Tenor, has a deep bass-baritone voice that lends a delightful gravitas to his villainy. And Finlay as the blowsy, tippling mother displays some loose cannon acting chops that make you wish she had a larger role.

True to Brecht’s vision, director Curtis Knecht uses painted signs, spoken asides and flat, discordant seedy music hall songs. It was a technique Brecht employed to keep audiences at an emotional and intellectual distance, something to better see themselves reflected in the parade of prostitutes, beggars, ruffians and ineffectual police.

Kat Evans’ period garb ranges from Victorian bustles and bowler hats to a smorgasbord of salacious net stockings and corsets.

Although the production is daring and ambitious, it lacks a menacing quality. The anti-hero Macheath comes across as more of a lightweight lecherous dilettante than a scourge with power, authority and confidence, all qualities needed to command a criminal underworld.

And the other villain Peachum, although inescapably cruel and greedy, is layered with an irresistible charm.

Is this really a critique of middle and upper class hypocrisy? It is debatable, but what we did see was a cynically mocking reversal that reveals a painful truth — the most powerful criminals scoop the rewards and get a free pass from judicial prosecution, a most uncomfortable truth to swallow.