The Threepenny Opera.

Scott Elliott's perverse new staging of The Threepenny Opera has all the ingredients that have made the show a roaring success since its 1928 premiere, but to appreciate them you have to work pretty hard, The production doesn't have an idea in its head beyond parading a kicky mixture of Broadway veterans (Alan Cumming, Jim Dale) and pop culture stars (Cyndi Lauper, Nellie McKay, TV's Ana Gasteyer) in costumes by Isaac Mizrahi with as much gender-bending and sexual display as possible.

The performances are a mixed bag, starting with Cumming's Macheath ("Mack the Knife," as the shoves famed song dubs him), a pale echo of his electrifying Broadway debut as the Emcee in Cabaret. He plays Macheath as a pansexual punk instead of a charismatic gangster. (Jealous girlfriend Lucy Brown is played by a man, Brian Charles Rooney, in drag.) Lauper as the aging whore Jenny Diver is tentative at first, but singing "Solomon Song" she's perfectly lit and coiffed to resemble Dietrich in The Blue Angel, Innocence and knowingness superbly cohabit McKay's portrayal of Macheath's young bride, Polly Peachum, but her voice grates, as if she's singing just out of her range. And as her mother, Gasteyer, who recently starred in the Chicago production of Wicked, bellows every line as if it's "Defying Gravity."

The show was written during Hitler's rise (five years after it opened, Weill, a Jew, had to flee Germany for his life), and today one could view The Threepenny Opera as an ironic depiction of how thieves and criminals end up running the country. But this production soft-pedals the politics, concentrating on a shallow tour of the demimonde.

* Book by Bertolt Brecht (new translation by Wallace Shawn) * Music by Kurt Weill * Directed by Scott Elliott * Starring Alan Cumming, Jim Dale, Ana Gasteyer, Cyndi Lauper, and Nellie McKay * Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54, New York City (through June 18)