Text by Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptman
Music by Kurt Weill
Directed by Barrie Kosky 
Musical Direction by Adam Benzwi

Premiering in 1928, choke-holding the genre into a new way of looking, The Threepenny Opera still possesses that overnight sensational approach it had all those decades ago. Berlocj Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann’s operatic still, in ways, is a game changer for how we look at the genre of both opera and musical theatre – Threepenny pulling up a chair and sitting slap-bang n the middle of the two fields.

A vicious and notorious criminal, Macheath (or Mack the Knife), has recently taken the hand of a well-too-do daughter of the manipulative industrialist Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, carried with weight and suave by Tilo Nes, though her father is yet to realise this. In his debonair even pretentious address to the Edinburgh crowds, he is interrupted by a beggar bellowing from the circle. Eventually coming to the realisation his daughter is taken in by Mack, Peachum seeks to have the man hanged. The only issue? You’ll have to catch him first.

In Barrie Kosky’s Berliner Ensemble production, Gabriel Schneider takes this womanising criminal, slathered in smokey-charcoal eyes, while maintaining a peculiarly welcoming, even warm tone of vocal and presence. There’s little wonder about his appeal to the women of the play, and the schmoozing hold he has over law enforcement and crowd alike. Utilising the entire stage, climbing over Rebecca Ringst’s magnificently designed set-piece which stretches high above the stage in a labyrinthian series of industrial geometric shapes.

There’s a stark homage to Berlin cabaret, especially as the Moon over Soho (Josefin Platt) ops their head through the show’s opening glittering streamer curtain, can anyone say “Willkommen”? They kick things off in an almost prophetic way as they ripple Mack the Knife through the audience, a tune which will poke its head into the libretto frequently across the night. A satire of the capitalist world, a tale of love, betrayal, and morality, you’ll struggle to find any of the latter, but plenty of the first pair in this vicious feast of fools of an opera.

The only injection of colour can be seen in Dinah Ehm’s costume creations for the women in Mack’s life – though every one of them has their own sense of autonomy away from just being love interests. They stand out against the monochromatic steps and trap doors of the set as they squeeze themselves all over the theatre from one area to the next, all with a detachment and illusion to the reality of things.

The transition and growth which Cynthia Micas’s Polly Peachum promotes in the show are impressive: from the clean-white tutu of a naïve youth to a much more comprehensive and dignified woman comes the second act. While Amelia Willberg’s Lucy bursts with a childlike glee of it all, animatedly bouncing around in pursuit of Mack’s affection while belaying a more vicious beast beneath the thrills and proud exterior.

But don’t think the limits of the stage mean anything to Mack, as the extension makes its way onto Adam Benzwi’s grand piano, enabling Schneider (and others) the opportunity to take the cabaret as close to the audience as they can. The entire six-piece band under Benzwi’s instruction turn Kurt Weill’s music into as important a player as the characters onstage. In fact, some of the orchestra even get in on the action, partaking in skits and routines with the performers onstage, extensions of the crime families or just hapless musicians drawn into it all.

But even while being lost in the grandeur of it all, and the power of performance and slippery and snide characters, the political edges of the entire affair seem to have rounded out, made more appetising in an effort to accommodate audiences. It takes no more than an edge off of the entire production, certainly not enough to diminish the eruptions of devasting betrayal, lost loves, and antagonistic snakes: it just doesn’t have that final ‘bite’ to herald it as the star of the season.