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.)

*Sweeney* reactions

Startling, funny, haunting. Opens with Toby in straitjacket.
Merritt David Janes remarkably different than he was in *The Wedding Singer* -- lowered voice, often lit from above so that his brow shadowed his lower face. Really only allowed himself to laugh in the Act One ending number, "A Little Priest" (a playful duet with Mrs. Lovett about the taste of lawyer- and politician-flesh, e.g.).
Lots of harsh lighting effects. Much of the singing done presentationally, straight out to the audience.
Sweeney's first entrance involves sitting up inside a coffin, a la Dracula.

Brian Ritter, operations and technical director at the Fox, shared a good analogy during intermission (and he remembers the Spokane Opera productions of *Sweeney* going back to circa 1989 and 1999): You tend to forget that these actors are carrying around musical instruments in the same way that, at a foreign film, you forget after awhile that you're reading subtitles.

In the same way that "Pretty Women" is simultaneously beautiful and creepy (melodically and in context) because it's being sung about the same woman, Johanna, but by her lustful guardian and her righteously indignant father -- similarly, this production gave Mrs. Lovett's comic vision of future domestic bliss with Sweeney, "By the Sea," an extra edge by juxtaposing her delighted imagings with her pulling out of a bucket one repulsive/scary surgical tool after another. (The pleasures that capitalism brings are earned through the sufferings of others.)

What *Sweeney* veterans remember, of course, is the gruesomeness. And so Bobo didn't really believe Carrie Cimma when she went on and on about a) how funny, and b) how loving this production is. But she's right. Anthony loves Johanna, Sweeney loved his wife and daughter, Mrs. Lovett is attracted in her way to Sweeney ... it's an ugly world we live in, but not devoid of passion and compassion. And Cimma herself — sauntering about in her degraded French maid's outfit — provided a lot of the comic (and naughty) bits herself.

"We all deserve to die," sings Sweeney, at his most sardonic, in "Epiphany." For Bobo, that helped explain this production's small white coffin, often carried about as if to emphasize around the time of Johanna's near-death (Sweeney is about to slit his own daughter's throat, when he's interrupted) that even such an innocent soul as she is still someone, like the rest of us, who is a despicable sinner.

For all the crash-cues and shock effects of light and sound, director John Doyle uses the simplest of effects at some junctures: a boom! of light and sound at a victim's death, and then silence, and then all we can hear is ... the slow pouring of blood from out of one bucket and into another.

Sweeney, the "Ballad" tells us, "serves a dark and a vengeful god." But he's also a kind of vengeful Jehovah figure: "Swing your razor wide! / Sweeney, hold it to the skies. / Freely flows the blood of those who moralize."
The Sweeneys of the world may be slightly crazy and inconvenient, but they rid of those who think that they know better than everyone else.

A powerful experience. Sitting in the Fox, it felt as if Spokane was getting some world-class theater. (I know, I know, this is the non-Equity second national tour. But the concept was a Tony-winner.) You just sort of gaped at the talent on display on that stage.

(Photos: from the first national tour of *Sweeney,* and from a 3/3/08 New York Post article on John Doyle)

*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 ...