Yay!
Theater: 'Sweeney Todd'
Review: Fullerton staging of the macabre, multiple Tony Award-winner hits all the right notes.
By ERIC MARCHESE
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
With the ghoulish preoccupations of Halloween, All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead right around the corner, Stages Theatre couldn't have chosen a better time to stage "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" - nor could it have selected a more acclaimed Stephen Sondheim show. The 1979 musical racked up eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book (by Hugh Wheeler), Best Score (by Sondheim) and Best Director (Harold Prince).
One might have thought that, by opting to both direct and star in this staging, John Massey Jr. had bitten off more than he could chew - but after seeing him excel as director and as the tortured title character, it's hard to imagine otherwise.
A blood-spattered sheet with the show's title printed on it, hanging front and center, sets the stage for Sondheim's darkest play, based on Christopher Bond's 1973 play "Sweeney Todd," itself based on George Dibdin Pitt's 1847 melodrama "A String of Pearls."
Right off the bat, Massey shows us his sorrows by singing of a poor barber named Benjamin Barker (himself) and his beautiful wife, preyed upon by a "pious vulture," Judge Turpin. Coveting Barker's wife, the judge had Barker falsely imprisoned for 15 years at the Australian penal colony Botany Bay.
Bent on revenge, Barker returns to London, takes a room over Mrs. Lovett's pie shop on Fleet Street and, calling himself Sweeney Todd, takes up his old trade as a barber. Soon, the two are in cahoots - and Mrs. Lovett's plan, for Sweeney to murder his customers so she can use their body parts in her meat pies - is a devious one that pushes the already half-crazed Sweeney over the edge while, in a strange way, liberating him.
It's also ghoulishly funny, yet with not a cheap laugh to be found, Massey and company capture every whiff of irony, bitter humor and the macabre air to be found in Sondheim's songs and Wheeler's libretto. Rayanne Trumbo's costumes use a muted palette that adds to their period accuracy, while at key moments Kirk Huff's lighting bathes the action in a hellish red. The result is a staging that, despite the play's nearly three-hour running time, is utterly gripping.
Matching Sondheim's often shrill, discordant score, the faces of the chorus look cruel, hard and sinister, while their singing, under Massey's hand, is expert. Sondheim's incredible talent for ingeniously rhyming lyrics can be heard repeatedly - notably in "A Little Priest," Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett's devilishly clever, riotous duet spiced by the composer's wicked puns and Massey and co-choreographer Sarah Reed's demented dance steps.
As Sweeney, Massey moves like a man possessed, a zombie craving only revenge upon the two men who ended his once-happy life. Yet, his smooth bass catches Sweeney's torment, humanizing him. One has to wonder why Massey doesn't attempt a British accent, but despite this shortcoming his reading scores.
Though Bonnie Kovar resembles Angela Lansbury (the original Mrs. Lovett), she makes the role her own with her loopy, goofy moxie and comical Cockney dialect, pigtails riding high atop her head. It's a campy reading to be sure, but not excessively so, oftentimes showing true desperation to match that of Massey. With her singing of "Wait," Kovar proves that her performance transcends her acting skills.
Michaelia Leigh delivers a pure alto soprano as Sweeney's daughter Johanna, while as her young suitor, Anthony Hope, Jordan Lamoreaux brings a precise tenor, with British inflections, to his singing, infusing the lovely ballad "Johanna" with longing. (Ironically, Sweeney later sings the same tune, slitting his victims' throats as he does so).
Justin T. Bowler's Judge Turpin is a crabby, Scrooge-like old lecher desperate to possess Johanna body and soul now that she's a woman - a warped old vulture given pleasing bass vocals by Bowler. Eric J. Hindley makes an oily, snippety bootlicker of the judge's sleazy deputy, Beadle Bamford. Dennis Bryan's Pirelli is a garish dandy with a gorgeous Italian tenor, and co-choreographer Reed is deliciously grimy yet poignant as the Beggar Woman, a madwoman in rags who figures so crucially in the play's bloody outcome.
With an endearing Cockney accent, Nathan Willingham capitalizes on the key role of Tobias, the Oliver Twist-like waif who winds up under Mrs. Lovett's wing. Willingham's solo rendering of "Not While I'm Around" is lovely and moving, his Tobias is visibly troubled by what he comes to learn of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett, and he carries the gravity of a lad who sees things no one so young and innocent should be forced to see.
Review: Fullerton staging of the macabre, multiple Tony Award-winner hits all the right notes.
By ERIC MARCHESE
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
With the ghoulish preoccupations of Halloween, All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead right around the corner, Stages Theatre couldn't have chosen a better time to stage "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" - nor could it have selected a more acclaimed Stephen Sondheim show. The 1979 musical racked up eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book (by Hugh Wheeler), Best Score (by Sondheim) and Best Director (Harold Prince).
One might have thought that, by opting to both direct and star in this staging, John Massey Jr. had bitten off more than he could chew - but after seeing him excel as director and as the tortured title character, it's hard to imagine otherwise.
A blood-spattered sheet with the show's title printed on it, hanging front and center, sets the stage for Sondheim's darkest play, based on Christopher Bond's 1973 play "Sweeney Todd," itself based on George Dibdin Pitt's 1847 melodrama "A String of Pearls."
Right off the bat, Massey shows us his sorrows by singing of a poor barber named Benjamin Barker (himself) and his beautiful wife, preyed upon by a "pious vulture," Judge Turpin. Coveting Barker's wife, the judge had Barker falsely imprisoned for 15 years at the Australian penal colony Botany Bay.
Bent on revenge, Barker returns to London, takes a room over Mrs. Lovett's pie shop on Fleet Street and, calling himself Sweeney Todd, takes up his old trade as a barber. Soon, the two are in cahoots - and Mrs. Lovett's plan, for Sweeney to murder his customers so she can use their body parts in her meat pies - is a devious one that pushes the already half-crazed Sweeney over the edge while, in a strange way, liberating him.
It's also ghoulishly funny, yet with not a cheap laugh to be found, Massey and company capture every whiff of irony, bitter humor and the macabre air to be found in Sondheim's songs and Wheeler's libretto. Rayanne Trumbo's costumes use a muted palette that adds to their period accuracy, while at key moments Kirk Huff's lighting bathes the action in a hellish red. The result is a staging that, despite the play's nearly three-hour running time, is utterly gripping.
Matching Sondheim's often shrill, discordant score, the faces of the chorus look cruel, hard and sinister, while their singing, under Massey's hand, is expert. Sondheim's incredible talent for ingeniously rhyming lyrics can be heard repeatedly - notably in "A Little Priest," Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett's devilishly clever, riotous duet spiced by the composer's wicked puns and Massey and co-choreographer Sarah Reed's demented dance steps.
As Sweeney, Massey moves like a man possessed, a zombie craving only revenge upon the two men who ended his once-happy life. Yet, his smooth bass catches Sweeney's torment, humanizing him. One has to wonder why Massey doesn't attempt a British accent, but despite this shortcoming his reading scores.
Though Bonnie Kovar resembles Angela Lansbury (the original Mrs. Lovett), she makes the role her own with her loopy, goofy moxie and comical Cockney dialect, pigtails riding high atop her head. It's a campy reading to be sure, but not excessively so, oftentimes showing true desperation to match that of Massey. With her singing of "Wait," Kovar proves that her performance transcends her acting skills.
Michaelia Leigh delivers a pure alto soprano as Sweeney's daughter Johanna, while as her young suitor, Anthony Hope, Jordan Lamoreaux brings a precise tenor, with British inflections, to his singing, infusing the lovely ballad "Johanna" with longing. (Ironically, Sweeney later sings the same tune, slitting his victims' throats as he does so).
Justin T. Bowler's Judge Turpin is a crabby, Scrooge-like old lecher desperate to possess Johanna body and soul now that she's a woman - a warped old vulture given pleasing bass vocals by Bowler. Eric J. Hindley makes an oily, snippety bootlicker of the judge's sleazy deputy, Beadle Bamford. Dennis Bryan's Pirelli is a garish dandy with a gorgeous Italian tenor, and co-choreographer Reed is deliciously grimy yet poignant as the Beggar Woman, a madwoman in rags who figures so crucially in the play's bloody outcome.
With an endearing Cockney accent, Nathan Willingham capitalizes on the key role of Tobias, the Oliver Twist-like waif who winds up under Mrs. Lovett's wing. Willingham's solo rendering of "Not While I'm Around" is lovely and moving, his Tobias is visibly troubled by what he comes to learn of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett, and he carries the gravity of a lad who sees things no one so young and innocent should be forced to see.