Simon Stephens' version of Brecht/Weill's The Threepenny Opera suggests that lust, shiny self-confidence and piles of cash (the going rate in Mack the Knife's London for a man's head to be prised loose from the gallows' rope is around £30,000) can utterly suborn a society that invites venality. In its climax the tentacles of rottenness even - or perhaps most of all - extend all the way up to Buckingham Palace itself as the greed and all-round viciousness of Mack the Knife is rewarded by a pardon and a knighthood to boot.

This was a visual treat of a production, the SLAM Theatre students using every square centimetre, both horizontally and vertically, of the Playhouse's ample space. The 3D soot-smeared brick set (Christina Hill: well done!) was super-effective, the checkerboard costumes (Chloe Dootson-Graube and Beth McCullagh) were suggestive of plotting and low-cunning, and then were replaced at the end by a perfectly-realized riot of colour down to the last party hat and shred of confetti.

The musical element, directed by Matthew Jackson with a six-piece band, was expertly produced and also carefully located on- and off-stage. One's penchant for Kurt Weill's songs (I'd suggest this is a play with songs rather than an outright musical), which hover in a musical place where tonal music joins its atonal counterpart, is of course a matter of taste; I kept hearing Marlene Dietrich in a smoky Berlin bierstube as they rolled out. What's surer is that the songs resemble one another quite closely, and I thought here that they could sometimes have done with a snip with the pruning shears. The lighting from Cherona Chapman and associates was for this material appropriately harsh and abruptly-changing.

Eeoghan McNelis, after a slightly self-effacing start, perhaps drew confidence from those around him and began to emote, sing and move with ease until by the end, standing motionless under a dangling noose, he'd become a commanding figure, his stage authority fully matching his physical stature. Emelye Moulton and Ella Tournes both sang powerfully (the production's facility with voice mics was flawless; not at all a given. Every word of the script was clear at the back of the auditorium) and swung plausibly between the extremes of emotional normality and near-hysteria that their parts demand. Maddy Page and Amelia Holt came on strong as their characters had more stage time in the second half, ably making up a quartet of terrific female performances - a real highlight of the production.

Alex Buchanan was as usual just a little more animated and a little more eager than those around him in the ensemble sequences. Marcus Knight-Adams as the rogue Peachum was less successful, I thought, in that his naturally rasping voice, here deployed unceasingly, I found monotonous and even tiring. He also spent most of the evening on full volume throttle. A pity, because he's a very talented actor, and showed this in his jerky movement and variety of byplay.

This was a big show, expertly co-ordinated by producer Emilia Clark, and above all a triumph for director Georgie Botham who handled the complex staging, on what had become quite a small acting area once the set was in place, with visual flair and great artistic discipline. Congratulations to the whole numerous company.

Georgie Botham’s reimagining of Brecht’s classic musical could not be more timely. Debuting in 1928, the play gained traction as the Great Depression started to bite, and was performed thousands of times on stages throughout Europe during the 1930s. Then, as now, capitalist crisis had ushered in an era of brutal austerity and imperial war, whilst liberalism was collapsing under a pincer movement by left and right, with the latter picking up the pieces. The Threepenny Opera reflected the cynicism of these times, ramming home from start to finish the pulverising effect of the need for money on every human value and instinct, and the utter hypocrisy of bourgeois morality.

That said, the parallels in the play’s content between then and now are not explicitly drawn out. Police corruption, the power of compromat, the awarding of knighthoods to known thieves, even the brutalising impact of war in Afghanistan - all are there, but it is for the audience to make the connections. After all - as Brecht himself would certainly have asked - why should the performers do all the work?

Indeed, there is much in this production which is thoroughly Brechtian in spirit. The performance is properly bawdy, littered with obscenities (though not so freely that they lose their punch), and delivered with all the brashness of Weimar-era cabaret. Marcus Knight-Adams is a divinely grotesque Beachum, with a face like Jim Carrey chewing thistles, his irate but unflustered demeanour the perfect foil to his screeching wife. In true Brecht fashion, everyone is scheming and plotting and ridiculous, yet no one is wholly loathsome. The exception, perhaps, is Mack himself, who, though his crimes are of course repellant, cuts an almost serene figure in a world of crude caricatures.

In all, this was an excellent rendition of a classic play, true to the spirit of the original - at once entertaining, uncomfortable and thought-provoking - and with some innovative twists of its own.