Michael Park and the cast of 'The Threepenny Opera.' Kevin Thomas Garcia

New York

Anybody who feels like sticking it to capitalism couldn't do better than to revive "The Threepenny Opera," the 1928 Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill masterpiece whose murderous antihero justifies his criminal career by asking this pointed question: "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?" By coupling such sentiments with a jaunty, sharp-cornered score that is equally indebted to early jazz and modern classical music, Brecht and Weill pulled the pin on a theatrical time bomb that has been going off at regular intervals ever since. Marc Blitzstein's English-language adaptation, which opened off-Broadway in 1954, ran there for six years, and "The Threepenny Opera" has since been mounted three times on Broadway. No pre-"Oklahoma!" musical has had a more enduring stage life—proof that U.S. theatergoers like nothing better than to be told what greedy bastards they are.

The Threepenny Opera

Atlantic Theater Company

Through May 11

The economy being the way it is, I suppose it was high time for somebody to tell once more the tale of Mack the Knife and his crooked cohorts. Hence the Atlantic Theater Company's off-Broadway revival of Blitzstein's pungently singable version, directed and choreographed by Martha Clarke. But Ms. Clarke, who came to fame as one of the founders of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and has since specialized in dance-driven performance-art works, is less at home with words. Not only do the dialogue scenes lack bite, but the staging is unfocused (too much stylized group movement, not enough here's-who's-talking clarity).

While I've never heard a "Threepenny" production that was better sung or played, the rough edges of Weill's score have been blunted in the process. It doesn't help that the cast is for the most part both smooth-faced and pretty-voiced: Michael Park, who plays the switchblade-toting Macheath, looks like an aging college quarterback, and his resumé reveals him to be a former soap-opera star. Only F. Murray Abraham, who is joyously cynical as Mr. Peachum, strikes anything at all like the right tone. To be sure, this small-scale production, for all its polite polish, is far more to the point than the Roundabout Theatre Company's glammed-up 2006 Broadway revival—but it lacks the sock-in-the-jaw impact without which no "Threepenny" revival, however well sung, can hope to hit the mark.


Will Eno is the male Sarah Ruhl, a postmodern semisurrealist who specializes in coyly metatheatrical comedies. Such flyweight folk cannot but prosper in the age of Irony Lite, and "The Realistic Joneses," which has moved to Broadway after a run at the Yale Repertory Theatre, is surely destined for similar success here and elsewhere.

The cast consists of two married small-town couples, both named Jones, who live next door to one another. Bob and Jennifer ( Tracy Letts and Toni Collette ) are older and sadder, John and Pony ( Michael C. Hall and Marisa Tomei ) younger and seemingly more frivolous, but they're stuck in the same leaky boat. Bob and John, it turns out, are both afflicted with an "irreversible and degenerative nerve disease" called Harriman Leavey Syndrome (yes, it's fictional) that is gradually gnawing away at their language skills and motor functions, and Jennifer and Pony are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with their slow but inexorable disintegration.

The Realistic Joneses

Lyceum Theatre

Through July 6

That's a familiar but nonetheless promising premise for a black comedy. Unfortunately, Mr. Eno, as is his wont, has swathed it in cute repartee: "Well, hey, if it isn't you." "No, it is. Hi." "I'm just saying, you know, what if it wasn't?" The ceaseless comebacks are, of course, part of the point of "The Realistic Joneses." Bob goes in for sarcasm, John for non sequiturs, but both are trying to keep their fears at bay by belching forth twin smoke screens of glib backchat. This, too, is promising, but it soon becomes clear that Mr. Eno, like Ms. Ruhl, is using jokes (if you want to call them that) to conceal a sentimental view of the world, one that he would doubtless prefer not to be caught harboring.

"The Realistic Joneses" has been recast for its Broadway run, with Mr. Letts the only actor retained from the original Yale Rep production. His better-known colleagues acquit themselves well, though, and Mr. Letts, who is as fine a character actor as he is a playwright, keeps Sam Gold's staging centered. Not even a production as good as this one, though, can cover up the play's underlying softness. Mr. Eno has been compared to Samuel Beckett, another black comedian of the stage whom he declares to be an influence, but "The Realistic Joneses" is to "Waiting for Godot" as "Downton Abbey" is to "The Rules of the Game."

Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, is the author of "Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington." Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.