Groban & Ashford in SWEENEY TODD On Broadway - Reviews & News Thread — Page 33

Robbie2 said: ""

Above are some more of my thoughts about the set and effects of the show.

Saw the matinee yesterday too and was blown away. The set was simple but worked. The orchestra sounded incredible and absolutely beautiful. You can understand every syllable out of Josh’s mouth. Annaleigh was funny and a natural performer. The ensemble was terrific. Nice to see Patricia Phillips in this. She did her “Carlotta” belting every now and then and towered over everyone else. For those of you who, like to sit close, the stage was ridiculously high, but it was nice to sit that close to them to see they are full facial expressions and make up. As said Jordan is miscast but he tried and sounded good sometimes. Nicholas nailed Pirelli and John Rapson found his calling. He was much better in this than he was in Les Mis. I didn’t realize he had such a great voice. Overall, an outstanding production that I know is going to win multiple awards. I literally found myself smiling most of the way through the show, even though it’s a thriller. I also must add that the blood was outstanding and made the audience laugh, cringe and groan but it looked amazing. If you’re on the fence, I say to go sooner than later before anyone tires out or starts missing performances. This was a terrific three hours well spent!

She has an impressive list of credits that include Glinda in Wicked, Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Dot/Marie in SITPWG, Maureen in RENT off-bway revival, Kinky Boots (Tony Nom.), Pilar in Legally Blonde as well as Elle in the developmental readings.

Non-musical theatre work includes Helena in Midsummer at the Public, a good amount of TV work (SMASH, Rocky Horror remake), and won a Tony for You Can’t Take It with You.

Who would you consider if not her?

ljay889 said: "The barber chair didn’t work during the Judge’s return, and Groban basically pushed Jackson into the chute. The audience got a real kick out of it, and both actors handled it well."

I saw this last night, and they had the same problem with the chair during the Judge's return. Jackson crawled off-stage, which was both hilarious and awkward.

Updated On: 3/12/23 at 06:58 PM

I was there and he did actually make it into the pit, although a bit awkwardly. I thought the cast handled it well and had expected them to stop the show.
It also added some humor in the following scene where he’s still alive in the basement.

Garber, imho, is one of the weaker-voiced Anthony's I've heard. He probably brought a lot to it in his acting, but on the album it doesn't translate as well as, say, Cris Groendaal who replaced him, or Davis Gaines or Jay Johnson or Hugh Parano.

I'm going to see this during the summer, so it's nice to read other reactions that the show is improving as the weeks go by. Not to mention the 2 weeks of previews left until opening night. Good to hear that there is indeed a whistle at some point during the show instead of cutting it all together, which would've been a choice.

Robbie 2, where was your seat for that photo? Just curious. Looks perfect.

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "Piggy-backing on what I said, let's be clear on what this revival is, as its press has been making it out to be: a love letter to the 1979 original. If you're coming expecting anything else, you're in the wrong theater."

I haven't been yet; I'm looking forward to seeing the show twice next month. But while its nostalgia may extend to preserving the original keys for the story's dullest character (in both senses, both deliberate) -- still, nothing I've seen or heard so far suggests that this revival approaches the original staging or designs quite so reverentially. Which is fine; I've been heartened by the upswing in enthusiasm here from folks who've seen it most recently and noted improvements from the earliest previews; and I'm very much hoping I'll love Kail's production on its own terms. But I'm not sure that just using the original full orchestration -- and finally giving the piece another NYC production that is not, in broad terms, experimentally (or pragmatically) miniaturized -- automatically makes it a "love letter" to the original (which isn't to say that both those choices aren't overdue and well worth celebrating). Kail & co. do seem to think of it that way, which sounds hopeful, but all I've seen to support such an intention in visual terms so far is a bridge and a crane; it remains to be seen whether their homage, however sincere, succeeds as more than a handful of isolated gestures.

My fear has been that their revival might end up as a nervously-calculated attempt to appeal to both fans of the original (large theater, full ensemble & orchestra, a few token "industrial-era" scenic elements) and of the Burton movie (sexy leads, black-brick surround, godawful poster art) -- while tiptoeing gingerly around Hal Prince's unapologetically Brechtian political framework, which has fallen from favor ever since SJS began blessing ever-smaller productions on the basis of his original pre-Prince impulse (chamber-sized revenge thriller, claustrophobic pub-theatre scares). However pure those intentions may have been, it's always seemed to me that Prince's epic scale and political animus ultimately found their way into the writing at a deep enough level that it's probably unwise to ignore them entirely; the Doyle and Tooting Arts versions were interesting and productive experiments, but they could never be definitive, because, in focusing exclusively on individual psychology at the expense of social context, these "teeny Todd"s left a significant chunk of the work unexplored.

Pace Sondheim Himself, Sweeney isn't a droll little fright-fest about a psychotically enraged serial killer and his besotted, amoral landlady. More than that, it's an apocalyptic, resolutely unsexy vision of humanity (or at least, of humanity under capitalism), so deeply pessimistic that its pitch-black "humor" should elicit more shivering revulsion than actual laughter. (The show, alarmingly, has never felt more timely).

All of which is my roundabout way of saying, I hope this production is indeed a love letter to Prince's 1979 original as well as Sondheim/Wheeler's. It's clearly not a carbon copy -- which, again, is fine. (I was just a few years too young to have seen it on B'way, but have spent countless hours over the ensuing decades obsessing over the original designs and going through the tour video with a fine-toothed comb -- and even a handful of photos from the new production are enough to establish that this ain't that). But I hope it somehow manages to reconstitute, for 21st-century audiences, something of the original shock and awe, the expansive theatrical world-building and sheer overwhelm, that have gone pointedly missing from previous revivals (NYCO notwithstanding) of this show.