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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?
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