A certain denizen of the city’s seamier quarters has once again surfaced in posher settings, doing all sorts of damage.

I am not referring to Mack the Knife, the cane-wielding, propriety-shattering antihero of “The Threepenny Opera.” I am referencing Scott Elliott, the man who has directed – or, to be more precise, unleashed a horde of talented but rudderless actors on – the Roundabout’s garish, ill-conceived revival of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s epochal musical.

For some reason, the qualities that have established Mr. Elliott as one of off-Broadway’s most sought-after directors abandon him on Broadway. As with 1996’s “Present Laughter,” this season’s pointless “Barefoot in the Park,” and an earlier pair of unruly Roundabout revivals (“The Three Sisters” and “The Women”), Mr. Elliott’s sensitivity with actors and visual economy seem to give way to a nervous lack of discipline whenever he comes uptown. His stagings of “Smelling a Rat” and “Curtains” with the New Group were virtual primers in finding and maintaining the conversational rhythms and harmonies within an ensemble cast, but his agitated take on “Threepenny” is dramatically tone-deaf.

The results here don’t sink as low as they did in “Barefoot” – the episodic structure and acrid songs allow several of the actors to carve out their own space and salvage chunks here and there. But combined with a bottom-feeding new translation by Wallace Shawn and a distracted Alan Cumming in the lead role, Mr. Elliott’s catch-as-catch-can staging gives his cast no opportunity to connect with Brecht and Weill’s 1928 evisceration of Weimar-era capitalism. When Brecht talked about the “theater of alienation,” I don’t think this is what he had in mind.

Unlike the highwayman of John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera,” Brecht and Weill’s source material, this Macheath is an unrepentant arsonist, rapist, thief, and murderer whose instincts for survival are bested only by his libido. Much of “Threepenny” concerns his marriage to Polly Peachum (up-and-coming pop star Nellie McKay), a somewhat vapid young thing with untapped survival skills, over the objections of her nouveau riche entrepreneur parents (Jim Dale and Ana Gasteyer). Before long, several other of Mack’s ladies have surfaced, including Lucy Brown (a cross-dressing Brian Charles Rooney) and the bruised prostitute Jenny (Cyndi Lauper), who betrays Mack for a few silver pieces.

The plot is quite simple; it’s the presentation, with Weill’s boisterous, woozy songs delivered in a consciously presentational manner, that exemplified what Brecht called the Verfremdungseffekt – literally, the “making strange effect.” (He memorably described the impact as that of “a cold douche for those whose sympathies were becoming involved” in the story.) Mr. Elliott appears to have taken this concept to heart, making the scenes strange in ways that benefit neither the overall piece nor the audience.

It’s not that he’s hurting for ideas. It’s just that they tend to be bad ideas, both structural (breaking up the play’s three acts in arbitrary ways) and conceptual (staging a late aria in German and then having some fun with the supertitles, a trick so daring that almost the exact same thing was used in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”).

Worst of all, Mr. Elliott appears to be operating on the theory that a snort of cocaine here and a groping threesome there will genuinely shock Broadway audiences. This epater le bourgeois mentality is echoed in Mr. Shawn’s translation, which nudges Brecht’s lyrics in a more vulgar direction without the provocative wit that translators from Marc Blitzstein to Eric Bentley to Michael Feingold have provided. (One thing that remains unchanged is Weill’s superb original orchestrations; music director Kevin Stites does an expert job as his bisected orchestra, split between the two Studio 54 balconies, charges its way through them.)

Mr. Cumming, a louche delight in the long-running “Cabaret” revival, offered a few glimpses of the churning emotions underneath his cool-kid facade in Noel Coward’s “Design for Living” a few years back. But those glimpses are in short supply here: Mr. Cumming falls back into preening habits, offering a warmed-over version of his “Cabaret” Emcee minus the alluring menace that makes Macheath so irresistible.

(And don’t be fooled by the poster art, which features a rakish Mr. Cumming in a skullcap and smoking jacket. As envisioned by Mr. Elliott and clothed by Isaac Mizrahi, whose overall costume design is a hodgepodge of postmodern frippery and Weimar-by-numbers fetish wear, this mohawked Macheath is less “Jack Sparrow meets Hugh Hefner” and more “Chelsea boy meets soccer hooligan.”)

Several performers attempt to compensate for this hole left in the center of the production. Mr. Dale’s high-kicking music-hall shenanigans may not have much to do with anything else going within 500 yards of him, but they are entertaining. Likewise with Ms. Gasteyer’s pop-opera pyrotechnics and Mr. Rooney’s high-camp coloratura. (As with last year’s Roundabout revival of “Pacific Overtures,” this production will likely come off considerably better on CD than it does on stage.) Ms. Lauper finds the emotional truth in “Solomon Song,” perhaps the show’s most challenging piece of music, and has the bonus of sounding surprisingly similar at times to legendary Weill muse (and original Jenny) Lotte Lenya.

And then there is Ms. McKay, whose sprawling pop songs and squabbles with her record label have earned her a fervent cult following. In most productions, a clear-eyed, beautifully sung, insightful performance like hers would be described as “luminous.” But I’m not sure that’s quite right for Brecht. The light she shines is very real, but it is cast outward, not on herself. She illuminates the brief, haunting “Polly’s Song” (a rare case of understatement for Messrs. Shawn and Elliott) with a beatific yet wary simplicity that is riveting to watch.

At most musicals, Ms. McKay’s efforts would be rewarded with a hearty round of applause. Not here: At the end of the last song, Mr. Elliott’s actors stalk off the stage – without a curtain call. Perhaps he’s indulging the sort of “daring” provocation that directors typically get out of their systems in college black-box productions. I prefer to think he gauged the audience’s mood and decided to spare the cast’s feelings.

Until June 18 (254 W. 54th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-719-1300).