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Sweeney
Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler
British director John Doyle’s production of Stephen
Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd is a mad Berlin
cabaret designed to capture all aspects of what mad means. A young man is unwrapped from a
strait jacket to introduce the story of Sweeney Todd. Todd, renamed from Benjamin Barker
who was sent Down Under to Australia for life on a trumped up charge, emerges angry and
vengeful from a coffin. Wearing ghoulish white makeup and black clothing, including a
leather jacket, Todd, played commandingly by Michael Cerveris, looms like a vampire hungry
for his next transfusion.
Rescued from the
sea by a young sailor named Anthony and then delivered to London, Todd heads to the site
of his former home and place of work in search of his wife. His beautiful wife, coveted
lustfully by the powerful Judge Turpin, had been the sole cause of Todd’s
imprisonment. Todd finds out from his former landlady, Mrs. Lovett, that his wife, shamed
by the Judge, has committed suicide and that their daughter Joanna is the Judge’s
ward.
Here the story of Sweeney Todd
turns. Mrs. Lovett, played confidently by Patti LuPone, recognizes that Todd is the former
barber Benjamin Barker, a man to whom she has always been attracted. Despite having fallen
on hard times, such that her meat pies are made with the most disgusting vermin, she has
kept the barber’s valuable silver tools instead of selling them. In many ways LuPone,
sporting a severely black pageboy wig and torn knee-high, fishnet stockings reminiscent of
the look given to Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, is
the star of this version of Sweeney Todd.
Unlike Angela Lansbury’s original creation of the character as a
cockney hag, LuPone’s Mrs. Lovett is a lascivious seductress with ankle-strap
stilettos, a padded behind, and the apron of a French maid. Her delivery of
Sondheim’s lyrics is conversational and relaxed. LuPone as Mrs. Lovett takes charge
and, soon, Todd, thanks to his adoring landlady, has a plan for his revenge while Mrs.
Lovett has a tastier source of meat for her pies.
In the intimate style of the cabaret where artists work before their
audience, hiding no part of their artistic process, the paired-down cast of ten (the
original 1979 Broadway production had 27 players) double as the orchestra. Although Cerveris on guitar and LuPone on tuba have
minor orchestral roles, the rest of the cast provides a satisfyingly rich concert.
Particularly notable are the young lovers Anthony (Benjamin Magnuson)
and Joanna (Lauren Molina) on cellos, both making their Broadway debuts. Magnuson’s
tenor voice raises goose bumps as he passionately sings about feeling Joanna through the
walls of Judge Turpin’s house where she is imprisoned. Molina effects the sound of
the birds she sings about in the song entitled, “Green Finch and Linnet Bird.”
As Joanna, Molina shines with virtuosity and purity.
Joanna also has a daffiness about her as she reveals in the song
“Kiss Me,” where every noise makes her more and more frantic. She is Judge
Turpin’s caged bird and when she won’t marry him, he (Mark Jacoby) commits her
to Bedlam, London’s worse hospital for the insane. Doyle has capitalized on Bedlam by
book-ending the open and close of Sweeney Todd
with a character that is unwrapped and then rewrapped in a straight jacket.
To complete the cabaret decadence that usually included transvestites,
Doyle chose Donna Lynne Champlin to play the male role Pirelli, Todd’s barbering
competitor. Pirelli struts about the stage in a top hat banded with a flowing scarf.
Appropriate to her character that roles together gypsy-shyster, bordello-frequenter and
pied piper, Champlin plays accordion and flute.
The single set is a tower of shelves with barbering accoutrements. Red
lights are used dramatically to accentuate the moment of death by victims who fall under
the blade of Todd’s razor. Costumes are predominately black and white with an
occasional burst of red like the white lab coats that have a dripping collar of red. The
lab coats signify the dead players who continue to sit on stage as the orchestra in a
montage perversely like the last act of Thorton Wilder’s Our Town.
Every player and theatrical element (lights, set, costumes, makeup)
enrich this stunningly effective production of Sweeney
Todd.
New York, January 10, 2006
- Karren
L. Alenier
