belated review of *Sweeney Todd* at U-Hi

[photo: timburtoncollective.com]
It was great on Saturday night to catch the closing performance of director Briane Green's production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at University High School -- full house, lots of folks from the Civic both in the crowd and involved in the show.
The buzz was that this was an exceptionally good high school show -- and the buzz proved to be correct. Technical elements were outstanding and the leads' voices and acting were solid. Briane Green (due in December -- congratulations!) has directed and choreographed with inventiveness.
Carolyn Jess sounded ominous chords on the keyboard at the outset, and Russ Seaton served as an energetic musical director. Dan Heggem (before showtime, mischievous, apologetic, lollipop-sucking) designed the dramatic lighting, Briane's husband George did the set. (Let's take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate people like these, who toil night after night at all kinds of shows, each making his or her talented contributions to local theater. Seriously. These are folks who sacrifice time (away from loved one) and money (they could be doing something else to bring in more income, God knows) and yet they keep on working at stuff that they love. That's not time wasted -- that's a life well lived. Bravo to all. Without artists like you, we wouldn't have a local theater scene.)
More on George Green's set design: Angular 2-by-4's descend from the ceiling. A practical and elaborate shop for Mrs. Loveit, with baking implements hung out front, rickety stairs on the side leading up to Sweeney's abbatoir up top: no walls, but a barber chair-with-death-slide that brought creeped-out-then-amused reactions from onlookers. When a two-story set piece swings out into view with a knife-wielding maniac up on top (or the damsel in distress, Johanna, rolls out, singing, on top of industrial scaffolding, whirling around her lover Anthony as they share a duet, it not only makes for effective and quick scene openings and exits, but it also creates a dizzying sense of visual variety.
Jordan Taylor's Sweeney had a commanding presence, both vocally and physically.
For "Pirellis' Miracle Elixir," he adopted far too casual body language -- I would have preferred remote, motionless, creepier -- but that's a minor quibble.
Kylene Peden (Mrs. Loveit) has mastered the art of subtly augmenting lyrics with gestures that reinforce their meaning. In "A Little Priest" and "By the Sea" in particular, she helped the narrative along by using her entire body while avoiding grandiose, melodramatic mannerisms. Sassy, practical, lower-class and conniving, she was a likeable Mrs. Loveit, an offhanded accomplice to butchery with a wicked sense of humor. Well done.
Right from "There's No Place Like London" and on through "Johanna" and its reprises, you could tell that Ross Mumford had an expressive voice as Anthony. Maybe it was the high-waisted sailor's trousers that he had on, but Mumford adopted a forward-leaning, slender eagerness in his posture that suited Anthony's love-yearning very well.
I would definitely pay to see Taylor, Peden and Mumford again, and I hope to see them again on local stages.
Most of the other roles were fulfilled capably -- of course there was some drop-off in the ensemble, and the Johanna was far too operatic and diction-bobbled for my taste** -- such that the thought "this is really good for a high school show" blended over into "this is just a really good show."
In the light of (unsuccessful) challenges to "controversial" high school shows in Las Vegas recently, it's great that U-Hi has encouraged a Sondheim show like this one (even if all the blood was edited out. Silly, if you think of it -- turn on any popular police procedural on network TV, to cite any one of numerous examples, and you'll see plenty of blood and guts.) ...
In fact, there is a serious argument to be made to high school administrators that excising the blood was a LESS moral move than leaving it in: Serial murders kept spotless only perpetuate the comic-book and summer-movie FANTASY that offing somebody doesn't really involve harm. It's like the Bush administration denying any photos of coffins returning from Iraq. It's like movie violence in which the guy gets shot but there's scarcely any blood. Ask anybody who's actually seen a victim of violence -- there's plenty of it. When are people gonna learn that images of violence (when not allowed to become addictive, and when discussed probingly by parents, friends, teachers) are actually a means of helping small children, teens and adults deal with our fears (of muggings, terrorism, war)?

But the CV district, still, deserves kudos. And so do Green and her cast. I'm glad I added another Sweeney to my collection. 
** Note to Breanna Duffy: In the his first college show -- and in a very positive review of Shakespeare's The Tempest — Bobo was singled out as the worst part of the production. Playing a young lover was beyond my talent, it seems. (One guy's opinion. I bounced back, lived, resolved to do otherwise in other shows.)

review of *A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum*

on Spokane Civic Theater's Main Stage through June 14

They only get one actual rimshot from the drummer in the band. They could have gotten 50: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is filled with giggly sex-farce jokes of the ogling kind.

Since its premiere back when JFK was president, Forum has featured the ogling and chuckling of middle-aged men, appraising the girlie-girls while singing early Stephen Sondheim songs. The suits are eyeballing the secretaries. It’s like Mad Men, musicalized and in togas.

Fortunately, the Spokane Civic’s Forum (through June 14) has Jerry Sciarrio in the central witty-slave role of Pseudolus. Sciarrio trips and skips and grimaces, always improvising, always calculating. His arms are crossed in consternation, then he beats himself in frustration; his fingers quiver whenever he’s hatching a new scheme. With his quick-thinking, forehead-slapping, twisting and turning antics, Sciarrio’s Pseudolus is so inventive, so out there in out-thinking his simple-minded masters, that it’s just a delight to observe him. He appeals both to the brain and the funny bone.

His best bits involve silly vaudeville steps with three Roman soldiers. He prances, they prance; he skips, they skip; he executes a five-step Lindy Hop, they fall all over themselves. Literally. It’s intricate, funny stuff for which choreographer Suzanne Ostersmith deserves credit along with the swift-footed Sciarrio. He’s so good that — given his previous seasons’ Nathan Detroit (in Guys and Dolls) and Sgt. Luther Billis (in South Pacific) — Pseudolus feels like the role that Sciarrio was destined to play.

There are other delights as well. Robert Wamsley as Senex — with a reprieve from his domineering wife and a real chance at a beautiful young virgin — is delightfully light on his feet for “Everybody Ought To Have a Maid.” The moments when he’s joined by one, two, three other men — all reveling in harmless fantasizing about the good life — is delightful. Wamsley’s confused sidelong glances during the father-son confusions of “Impossible” enlivened even that less memorable song.

For the sake of the Big Reveal — uncovering David Baker’s exceptional set — director Diana Trotter pays the price (yes, it’s in the script, but let’s have some fun) of isolating Sciarrio and the three overacting Proteans in front of the curtain.

It’s a small-scale, slow opening to what eventually builds into the raucous, energetic and justly famous opening number, “Comedy Tonight.” Why not party from the get-go?

Baker’s colorful and detailed set, evoking antiquity with just a dash of the cartoonish, is worth the surprise. Roman statues loom above slanted roofs, striking the right mix of distinguished and loony.

Gary Pierce has spent years mugging on local stages, but now he has found the role that’s actually suited to them — and it’s a guy named Hysterium. Who runs around in drag. A lot. Frantically. With his eyes bugging out.

Nonetheless, Pierce has some masterful moments: a drawn-out double-take when the mast ... mistress? unexpectedly returns home, along with the entire “dead bride” and macho soldier sequence. (It’s complicated.)

And it’ll be interesting to see if a couple of promising newcomers to Civic — Callie Bley as the airhead, Lauralynn “Lulu” Stafford as the shrewish wife — will reappear in other, less broad roles.

All their antics are in the service of har-har titillation. In the early ‘60s, when being labeled a “fairy” could be a career-killer (or worse), tension over gender roles led to guffaws of release every time a man in drag or a bossy woman showed up. Today, lots of folks have figured out that sexuality’s a continuum, that gender roles aren’t rigid: less tension, less humor.

But c’mon, a man in drag is always funny.

Yes, indeedy, though telling the same joke three times to make sure that we get that the blonde is an airhead? Not so much. These gags aren’t just old, they’re fossilized.

The best laughs arrive when cast and script turn ironic. Being “Lovely” may be all that Bley’s Barbie-doll character can manage, but Sondheim’s swaying tune sheds its condescending tone and revs up the laughs when it’s reprised by Sciarrio and Pierce, who has circles of rouge on his cheeks because he’s wearing a bridal veil. And when Sciarrio is confronted with the gee-whiz enthusiasm of the young male lead (who’s named Hero and played by Jesse Ward), his sarcasm mocks musical-theater conventions. (As the braggart soldier, Shawn Hudson has great fun with self-mockery too.)

Half a century later, I guess we’re less patriarchal and more ironic. But as the audience left the theater after the show, I wasn’t the only one humming about four of Forum’s catchiest tunes: “”Comedy Tonight,” “Lovely” and “Everybody Ought To Have a Maid.” And still laughing over the madcap goofiness of the final door-slamming sequence that Trotter had engineered.
The Civic’s Forum was an often entertaining production of an often behind-the-times musical.

*A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum* -- Philia, Hero, Hysterium and Pseudolus

at Spokane Civic Theatre's Main Stage, May 15-June 14, 2009
directed by Diana M. Trotter
www.spokanecivictheatre.com
325-2507

[photo by Josh Smith -- in back: Callie Bley as Philia and Jesse Ward as Hero
In foreground: Gary Pierce as Hysterium and Jerry Sciarrio as Pseudolus ]

Opened on Broadway 47 years ago this week with Zero Mostel as Pseudolus and Jack Gilford as Hysterium.
Jerome Robbins, of course, is the one who insisted that the show needed a rousing opening number -- which inspired Sondheim to write "Comedy Tonight."
Based on three plays written 2,200 years ago by the Roman playwright Plautus.
Erich Segal wrote translations of Plautus -- his translation of *Miles Gloriosus,* for example, appeared in 1969, the year before *Love Story* (the novel; the Ali McGraw-Ryan O'Neal movie appeared in '71); Segal continues to this day as a classics scholar.
All three actors who have played Pseudolus on Broadway (Mostel '62, Phil Silvers '72, Nathan Lane '96) have won the Tony for Best Actor.
The 1966 film was Buster Keaton's last; he played Erronius. Michael Crawford (as in Phantom)) was Hero. Mostel and Gilford reprised their stage roles from four years before. Michael Hordern (distinguished British actor, played King Lear and Prospero in the BBC Shakespeare series of 1978-84) played Senex. But the movie cuts Pseudolus' song "Free," which he sings right after making the deal with Hero and falling out of a tree. The movie, in fact, cuts much of Sondheim's score.

Pseudolus is the laziest slave in Rome. He yearns to be "Free." When Senex and Domina leave town, Pseudolus gathers that their son Hero has the hots for the virgin-among-courtesans next door, Philia. If Pseudolus procures the girl for Hero, can he gain his freedom? Well, there are a few complications along the way.

The two houses next door belong to Marcus Lycus, the pimp for a house of ill repute, and Erronius, who's out wandering around and looking for his long-lost son and daughter.

Philia has been promised to Miles Gloriosus ("braggart soldier"). So Pseudolus convinces Marcus Lycus that Philia caught the plague in Crete -- she really needs to be sequestered over at Hero's house. But Marcus Lycus insists that Philia ultimately belongs to the army captain.
So Pseudolus concocts a story about how Philia has died of the plague -- which requires him to get her a sleeping potion that will mimic death. Then Philia and Hero can stow away on a boat and be together. Pseudolus gets a recipe for a sleeping potion from Hysterium, the head slave; all he lacks is a key ingredient, mare's sweat.

But then Senex returns home unexpectedly, and things get complicated. For reasons too complicated to go into, Philia throws herself at Senex (thinking that he is the army captain), and he's only too happy to play along; Senex decides to take a bath in Erronius' house, just before the latter returns from his wandering; Erronius is convinced that his own house is haunted, and so Pseudolus sends him on a wild goose chase all around Rome, just to be rid of him.

Miles Gloriosus turns up to claim his bride, which causes Pseudolus to impersonate Marcus Lycus and come up with a not-very-good lie. The army captain gets suspicious, and Pseudolus looks to be in a really tight spot. When Domina shows up, worried that her husband Senex might be engaging in some hanky-panky, she disguises herself in a virginal white robe and veil -- just like Philia, and just like Hysterium, who's in drag because ... oh, just go see the show.

Why I am an ignoramus and Loretta Young can f*** off

Notes from a recent version of those traveling Stephen Sondheim/Frank Rich conversations — comments from those of you who caught it in Seattle (?) last year? -- reveal some hilarious Ethel Merman anecdotes; Hermione Gingold's bravado; and why critics who don't know music perhaps shouldn't be reviewing musicals. (See points 1 and 20.) ((Bobo obviously has some homework to do. Note how Rich's response is off-topic -- the question isn't about knowing too much about a given show beforehand so you can still experience some surprise; it's about knowing the basic tools of the trade. And Bobo, as in so many ways, is deficient here.
[photo: Hermione Gingold in 1978, age 80 (she lived 1897-1987)]

*Sweeney Todd*: interview outtakes

Outtakes ‘n’ Stuff
from the Carrie Cimma (Mrs. Lovett) interview
for the John Doyle production of
Sondheim’s *Sweeney Todd* (at the Fox, Dec. 14-15)
[ preview of the show is the Arts Lead in the Dec. 11 *Pacific Northwest Inlander* ]

Note that the lead image in the Dec. 11 Inlander pictures Merritt David Janes as Sweeney.
Janes played the title role in the first-national-tour production of *The Wedding Singer* that visited Spokane in November 2007.
Back then, Bobo had a fun interview with Janes. Sample exchange:
Could your mullet beat up Adam Sandler’s mullet?
Well, my mullet is from Vermont and his is from New Hampshire. So it’d be an all-New England battle.
Since the *Inlander* archives are all FUBAR, be the first to e-mail michael@inlander.com and receive your own forwarded copy of that historic interview. (There was even some discussion of Madonna’s having filmed scenes at the Bigfoot.)







But back to Sweeney …
Ben Brantley dropped a great allusion into his Nov. ’05 review of the Doyle-directed Michael Cerveris/Patti LuPone production, calling it
“Marat/Todd”
— which of course refers to Peter Weiss’ 1963 play,
*The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade,*
which is much better known by its shortened title, *Marat/Sade* (and which not a single person at Inlander HQ recognized at all).






So all that, and Bobo couldn’t use it.
Bobo has seen a production of *Marat/Sade,* but can’t remember where – it was a college show (nice, big cast), and now I think it must have been at UCLA, c. 1985.
The point of contact is that both productions take place inside insane asylums, with some questioning of who’s running the asylum, who’s actually sane and insane, etc. Buckets of blood, throat-slitting in bathtubs (or in barber chairs), etc.


OUTTAKES: CARRIE CIMMA INTERVIEW
Cimma, who plays Mrs. Lovett, was also in last year’s touring production of *The Wedding Singer.* Visit the "Sweeney on Tour" site — and click on "Photos" for the best images of this production.



Effect of the Johnny Depp movie of a year ago?
Carrie Cimma: “The movie has helped with name recognition. We opened in September, and a lot of twenty-somethings have come out to see the show because of it.”

Mrs. Lovett even has tweener fans:
“There was this one little girl, 8 or 9 — NOT the recommended age for this show, by the way — and she came to the stage door and her mom said she was really shy. So she leaned over halfway and said, really loud, ‘I want to be HER!’”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” says Cimma, laughing.

Why Mrs. Lovett’s instrument is the tuba:
“Patti LuPone is the reason that all Lovetts have to play the tuba. In New York, they told her, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ And she said, ‘Absolutely not. I’m not going to be the only one who’s not playing an instrument. Besides, as a matter of fact, I once played the sousaphone in an all-girls marching band.’
“Since that happened, everyone playing this part has to play the tuba.”
Cimma herself played “some brass, a little French horn” in high school.
“It’s the most expensive prop I’ve ever had to work with.”

on how musically talented the actors in this production (the second national tour) are:
Sweeney and the Judge both play the trumpet.
“The original Sweeney played the guitar. In London, Sweeney played the trumpet. Our Sweeney plays both.”

How much of a musical background were the actors expected to have?
“Clearly, we’re meant to act and sing first.
“Our Johanna, aside from being a beautiful singer, is on full scholarship at school. I don’t know what school she goes to, but she’s on full scholarship for both vocal performance and cello.
“Our Beadle has played the piano for 30 years. Our Toby plays four instruments. The judge plays three.”

on acting and playing an instrument:
Playgoers says that they “sort of forget [that each of them is lugging around an instrument] and that they’re drawn into the story.”

Director John Doyle, says Cimma, just finished *Road Show* at the Public with Michael Cerveris and “with a lot of people from *Company* and from *A Catered Affair.*”

How much contact did the cast have with John Doyle?
“Adam John Hunter, who was the assistant director and PSM on Broadway with Doyle, works directly with us.
“J.D., as we call him, stopped by for a couple of days right before we went into tech and talked about the concept.
“Hunter would be sending Doyle photos of costume designs, since of course Doyle had to approve everything.”

Doyle’s first production in England:
“Halfway through the rehearsal period of the first production — this was in a little 219-seat theater, and they were doing it just to try to get some money so they could go on —one day, Doyle said, as they were plodding through, ‘I looked around and said, “Oh, dear, this is actually working.”’”


more on “symbolic” coincidences in the show:
“And it’s funny, lots of things that people think are so clever about this production, came about because of absolute coincidence.
“A lot of the things that people think are funny and so clever, were out of necessity. People ask, ‘Why is Sweeney moving furniture at this one point between scenes?’ Well, because he’s the only person who’s not playing an instrument at that point ...
A lot of the show is open-ended like that, as if we are making up the story as we go along.”

on the buckets of blood:
“What we were told was, when this is set, sometime around 1910, in asylums they would have operating tables, and at each corner there would be a bucket to catch the runoff blood.”
Lovely.

on the stark set:
“We have this big wall with all these knickknacks — bedpans, straps, whatever you’d expect to find in an asylum. An entire wall of bric-a-brac.”

Lighting setup:
“Our electricians are spectacular. Our crew spends eight hours doing set-up before the show, and six of those hours are for the lighting.”

Isn’t it just a blood-and-guts show?
“I tell people that it’s also a love story — Sweeney’s love for his wife, Mrs. Lovett’s love for Sweeney ...”

Cimma is playing the Angela Lansbury / Patti LuPone / Helena Bonham Carter role:
“I’ve listened to Lansbury’s recordings, but I never saw her. As for Ms. LuPone, I made a point of not watching her. I wanted to approach it with the role fresh in my head. I want to go in with nothing preconceived. So I didn’t find the ‘grand dames’ helpful.”

Favorite moments?
“’Little Pirate’ — it’s the funniest, but then it’s also about eating people.”

about cannibalism on stage:
“Even in the movie, even in the traditional staging, they’d kill someone and the audience is going, “Look at all the fake blood.’”
“But one thing that I actually liked about the movie was when they’d kill people, and all the bodies were dropping down into the pit of the basement, even though a lot of people were turned off by that.
“But in the movie, they could show what they were really doing.
“Our show is more eerie. It’s creepy, very suggestive.”

Doyle’s inspiration for this version of Sweeney involved German cannibalism online:
“Doyle told us about the article that inspired him to do the show: Some people in Germany were volunteering online for cannibalism — they were actually asking to be cooked and eaten, on this German Internet site. And he said that when he saw this article, it was so creepy, and then he knew he had a reason to do this show.”
Related BBC articles:
here and
here.
And Der Spiegel has an interview.
And The Guardian has a graphic account of the night of the murder. It’s like Hannibal Lecter come to life (or, to the table).


on Sondheim’s use of the Dies Irae and leitmotivs:
“Oh, that’s in ‘The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.’ That’s our Greek chorus moment. The ballad is when we drop everything and are just flat-out singing to the audience.” “’Epiphany’ has Johanna singing her song proper, and then a lot of other times, you hear that theme. Johanna also has “Green Finch,” which pops up in other places.”

[She had to think about her own themes.] “In the recitative at the end of Act One —
that comes up again at the end of the show, comes in at the Epiphany and again at the end of the show, little bits of it here and there. And that’s in ‘Pies,’ too.
“It’s in 3/4 time, a kind of waltz thing in ‘Priest’ and in “Pies.’ It’s in the Epiphany at the end of the show.”

Since Cimma is playing Mrs. Lovett, she sees a different emphasis in the show. It’s NOT all about blood and guts:
“Where I’m coming from, my word is ‘love.’
But Lovett’s an opportunist….
“No, she just wants to make money so she and Sweeney can live a better life.
There’s a song in Act Two about leaving for the seaside so she and
Sweeney can live a better life.
[ She disagrees with Hal Prince that the show is about the excesses of capitalism and about the desperation with which some people seek to escape the lowest social classes, while she agrees with Sondheim that the show is about how vengeance can turn into obsession. ]

Favorite moments?
“’Little Priest’ at the end of Act One, and my death — it’s pretty fantastic, so I can really open up and let it roll.”

When it comes to her family, Cimma gets no sympathy;
“My family came to see the show in Hartford,” she says. “And they were, like, ‘You’re so mean. We feel bad for Toby.’”
But what about watching you die, Carrie? How did they react then?
“They said, ‘You deserved it.’ Oh, OK. Thanks, Mom.” [laughs]

&&

Bobo just wants to add that Doyle's *Company* (which he saw on PBS and which had this same "gimmick" of the actors carrying and playing their musical instruments during the performance) was one of the handful of most moving productions that he has ever seen in musical theater. But then that Raul Esparza fellow is so darn cute ...

Sondheim and Rich in Portland, March 11

Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich are engaging in public chats in five West Coast cities. A week ago, tickets were sold out in L.A. but still available in Santa Barbara.
The former NY Times theater critic is a big fan -- he once characterized *Gypsy* as the American musical theater's version of *King Lear.* For his part, Sondheim says that Rich asks interesting questions.
Details will accumulate as you and I add them.