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There’s a very good reason that latecomers to the revival of Sweeney
Todd now playing at the Eugene O’Neill will not be seated until
forty minutes into the show – and that’s because from the moment the
curtain rises, the audience is hypnotized. You couldn’t move for a
fire warden, let alone a latecomer. Once that razor-slashed indigo
curtain rises to reveal the brilliantly barren and dystopic set, you
are rendered complicit in the tale of the demon barber of Fleet
Street. Using only ten black dining chairs, a coffin, and a
heaven-high open pantry laden with dishes for piemaking, and working
with a palette of blacks, blues, whites, and – yes, of course –
reds, and with props as elemental as a red knitted scarf,
blood-spattered lab coats and white sheets, this evocatively-staged
revival immediately conveys the corruption and depravity of that
nefarious miasma, 18th-century London.
Led by Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone, the cast of ten, all of
them working at the very top of their game, plunges the audience
into a city still reeling from the plague years as the industrial
revolution floods the streets with beggars, thieves, prostitutes and
criminals. This is the city to which Sweeney Todd returns after
fifteen years of incarceration in Australia, a city ruled by fear
and disease. And with Todd’s homecoming to his neighborhood, where
his barber shop still remains, and where Mrs. Lovett, like a black
widow, lies in wait, the horror commences with an alacrity that
hardly allows for a breath and certainly not a movement – and hence
the absolute stillness in the audience.
And even after forty minutes of mesmeric splendor, it just gets
better – or worse, as Charles Dickens might argue, writing, “The air
was impregnated with filthy odours… Drunken men and
women....wallowing in filth; and from several of the doorways, great
ill-looking fellows....cautiously emerging, bound, to all
appearance, on no very well-disposed....errands.” This is the world
which is immediately communicated in John Doyle’s thrilling
reimagining of what is arguably Sondheim’s masterpiece. And given
the images which have populated our television screens over this
past year, the planet’s annus horribilis, it is no small wonder that
much of the horror which unfolds on the stage seems instantly
recognizable. With mendacious leaders and corrupt judges, and
hypocrisy thick in the air, you would be easily forgiven for
thinking, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
This is musical theatre at its most provocative and thoughtful, and
a production a marvel to witness. Not only thespians, the actors
inhabit their roles musically as well (Patti Lupone with a tuba is a
sight not to be missed by any self-respecting theatre queen), the
group of them forming an orchestra as powerful as orchestras three
times their size. And when the songs come, songs now so familiar
from more than twenty years on the cabaret circuit, they are
spellbinding in their visceral connection to the plight of these
characters.
Given this production’s haunting power, it’s no wonder that at
show’s end, the fate of Tobias (brilliantly played by Manoel
Felciano), alone in a madhouse, appears to echo that which confronts
all of us in the audience. Will the last sane person on the planet
please turn out the light?
Best Always,
Mark and Robert
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