PUBLISHED ON December 14, 2008
Yakima Herald-Republic
by KIM NOWAKI YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
This season's Best of Broadway series at the Capitol Theatre just keeps getting better and better.
Friday's performance of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" was not as packed as I thought it would be after the success of Tim Burton's 2007 film version starring Johnny Depp.
But, it is the holidays and theater-going funds may be tight. Those who did go, however, got their money's worth.
I first saw the filmed version of Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Tony-winning "Sweeney Todd" in high school and instantly fell in love with the sinister story of a vengeful and murderous barber who's unlucky customers are repurposed by Mrs. Lovett in her neighboring pie shop.
And I liked the Depp/Burton version, too. So I was eager to see how this pared-down production by British director John Doyle compared. (It earned him the best director Tony in 2006.)
The show stars just 10 actors who are also the musicians. They are on stage the entire performance and between them play everything from guitar, violin, clarinet and piano, to tuba, accordion and orchestra bells.
The sparse set features just a handful of chairs, a ladder, a coffin in the center of the stage that is transformed into all kinds of set pieces and a large white sheet. A red light and a red liquid poured from one white pail to another signify the murders.
The result is a show that focuses less on spectacle and more on the story and music, which is perfect for something like "Sweeney Todd" with its wonderfully twisted tale and memorable, singable songs (some people sitting next to me were singing along) such as "The Worst Pies in London," "Poor Thing," "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir," "A Little Priest" and "Not Wile I'm Around."
Doyle's production opens in an insane asylum where we see Toby (Chris Marchant) being taken out of a straightjacket. The rest of the cast then enters and we meet the sweet and sincere sailor Anthony (Duke Anderson) and Sweeney Todd (Merritt David Janes), who has just escaped from an Australian prison where he was sent on a trumped up charge by Judge Turpin (played by David Alan Marshall with a sort of naive evilness).
Todd returns to his former home and meets Mrs. Lovett (played with perfect bawdiness by Carrie Cimma), baker of the worst meat pies in London, who tells him his wife poisoned herself after being raped by the judge.
Todd then learns his daughter, Johanna (Wendy Muir), is the ward of the judge, who intends to marry her. Todd finds this out from Anthony, who has fallen madly in love with Johanna and devises a plan with Todd to steal her away from the judge.
As Anthony works on his plan in the name of love, Todd -- after getting Turpin in his barber chair but failing to kill him -- develops a blood lust and exacts revenge on anyone unlucky enough to come in for a shave. Those unfortunate customers become some of the most popular pies in London.
Janes played his Todd with a distant, simmering anger that eventually explodes into a single-minded plan of revenge. It makes you heartsick knowing it's his own love for his wife and child that have driven him to this point.
At the same time, we watch Mrs. Lovett settle happily into her new life of making pies with her boy helper Toby -- taken into her custody after Todd kills his former chaperone -- and planning a future for her and Todd, who we suspect she's always been in love with.
The climax comes with multiple murders: Todd kills the judge, a nosey beggar woman who turns out to be his beloved wife, and then Mrs. Lovett, who knew all the time Todd's wife was still alive. All of this is witnessed by Toby, who goes mad from all the horrors he's just seen, and kills Todd.
Toby is then put back in the straightjacket and left alone on the stage.
The idea that all this is in Toby's head -- that he's reliving it while locked up alone in an institution -- makes the staging all make sense: that all these characters are there, in his head, never leaving his mind, or the stage.
It was a mesmerizing, flawless show. And hopefully it will encourage more people to support newer productions like this that just may be on their way to Yakima.
Before the show, Capitol Theatre CEO Steve Caffery announced some of the possible productions for the 2009-10 series. They included classics like "Annie," "The Wizard of Oz," "Cabaret" and "Camelot" (the last two received big applause), but also new shows like the people/puppet acted "Avenue Q," "Cry Baby," based on the John Waters film, and "The Wedding Singer," adapted from the Adam Sandler comedy.
