Groban & Ashford in SWEENEY TODD On Broadway - Reviews & News Thread — Page 38

I guess I believe people when they suggest it's too quiet (especially if they are sitting in Mezz) and that they haven't seen this elsewhere but the reason I'm slightly skeptical of SOME people is that in my opinion a Broadway-sized orchestra live can be substantially smaller than you might hear at symphonic concerts or opera houses, and never sounds as loud as what we might hear on recordings where we turn the volume up and have it in our ears. So I don't know if it's easy to compare to things like the Sweeney film or NYPhil concert. 

I also suspect that to compensate for ever-reducing orchestra sizes that shows sometimes do compensate by overamplifying, which again creates this issue of mismanaged expectations.

TotallyEffed said: "Ashford is giving an incredibly canned performance. Every single second on stage is a bit for her to act like a clown. We've seen her do it a dozen times in New York and it's really wearing thin. There's not sincerity, no subtly. And she sings it like a valley girl lazily singing along to the radio. I wanted fuller richness, vulnerability, deviousness. It's feels so contemporary and is just begging the audience for laughs every dang second. Her accent is absolutely abysmal. And at times impossible to understand. I'm sorry but I just don't care for a mugging, cloying performance like that. It's the same thing every time. The audience laps it up (as will the critics, I'm sure), so what do I know?"

I really couldn't agree more with a lot of your review, especially this take on Ashford's performance. At first preview, I found she was more restrained than I've known her to be for much of the first act, but by "A Little Priest" had all but thrown out an effort to characterize Lovett and just decided to deliver a bunch of canned bits and gags for the sake of getting laughs. The accent is truly unforgivable, so much of the brilliance of the material is lost in her mush mouth.

I went back over the weekend to see Nicholas Christopher (excellent actor, sits a bit low in his voice, but he was genuinely terrifying at times in ways that Josh Groban just isn't), and found her performance to be even more exhausting. I managed to purchase an excellent seat in the front of the orchestra and still struggled to understand what Annaleigh was saying, and even more what she was doing. To my eye, there is no through line in her performance. There is no groundedness or humanity. There is just someone trying to squeeze as many laughs out of the audience as possible. And it's just draining to watch.

But like you said, the audience was lapping it up and I'm sure critics will too. I had high hopes for her in this show because I thought she was just beautiful in Sunday in the Park, but this felt like a return to the Kinky Boots style comedy and I did not enjoy it.

It's an uneven production, but at least this past weekend it felt more cohesive than it did at first preview. Still some choices I don't particularly care for, and I'm still not convinced Tommy Kail was the right director here. But still, it's a thrill to hear this music performed (mostly) very well with a full orchestra.

 

binau said: "I won't be seeing this until next month, but I'm getting the impression that Sweeney isn't the shoo-in to win best revival at the Tonys."

I think there is no chance it will win best revival but I think that's ok - I just hope the critics are kind enough to emphasise the positive elements of the production. At the end of the day, professional Sondheim is still professional Sondheim and Sweeney Todd in particular is near the top of the tree. I think the production deserves a place on Broadway even if it doesn't win any awards! (I wonder if Groban has a shot).

I hadn't been thinking about the Tonys or the impact of the upcoming reviews but my personal guess is that the revival will get mixed notices, with a few raves and a few outright pans. I certainly don't think it is a shoo-in for Best Revival (I've only seen Sweeney Todd, not the others - though I will be seeing Into the Woods on tour in June) though I have no idea what's the favorite. There are two Sondheim revivals, one that already got raves but is closed, the well-reviewed Parade and Camelot. As others have noted, it's a pretty stacked category - and people who want to vote for a Sondheim show have two choices.

If it doesn't win Best Revival, the question is what does that mean for Sweeney Todd's commercial prospects. Optimists might hope it's relatively critic-proof, unless it's regarded as a disaster. But I can't see it being anything close to The Music Man, a much-loved musical with a bigger star in Hugh Jackman than Sweeney Todd has in Josh Groban. The Tonys basically ignored The Music Man despite its huge box office success, and the people kept coming and paying the big bucks anyway. There is no reason to believe a Sondheim revival - not even this show - can survive bad reviews, which if nothing else would dampen enthusiasm among casual theatergoers, especially with some big popular entertainment shows opening this summer. Last week, when I was there as a tourist, Sweeney Todd felt like the show to see, an event with a real buzz in the theater. But does it fall off a cliff that plagues many high-profile revivals after a few months? Does it even matter whether it wins Best Revival? Can a big-budget Sondheim revival make money? Shoot, by September, it will be competing with another Sondheim revival, Merrily We Roll Along, as well as his final show. Things will start getting cluttered, and the revival will have to succeed as a commerical venture on its merits as mass entertainment when even the original couldn't make investors' money back.

I've argued before that Sweeney Todd;s success won't depend on purists, but it can't be regarded as a subpar show either. Dynamic pricing works both ways.

Updated On: 3/23/23 at 04:17 AM

My hunch is Parade will win Best Musical Revival given that’s it’s a spectacular production which has been very well received critically, not to mention its relevance, importance and timeliness.  

What is the current running time?

I’ve heard that the intermission is a little longer than usual. Why is that? 

getatme said: "TotallyEffed said: "Ashford is giving an incredibly canned performance. Every single second on stage is a bit for her to act like a clown. We've seen her do it a dozen times in New York and it's really wearing thin. There's not sincerity, no subtly. And she sings it like a valley girl lazily singing along to the radio. I wanted fuller richness, vulnerability, deviousness. It's feels so contemporary and is just begging the audience for laughs every dang second. Her accent is absolutely abysmal. And at times impossible to understand. I'm sorry but I just don't care for a mugging, cloying performance like that. It's the same thing every time. The audience laps it up (as will the critics, I'm sure), so what do I know?"

I really couldn't agree more with a lot of your review, especially this take on Ashford's performance. At first preview, I found she was more restrained than I've known her to be for much of the first act, but by "A Little Priest" had all but thrown out an effort to characterize Lovett and just decided to deliver a bunch of canned bits and gags for the sake of getting laughs. The accent is truly unforgivable, so much of the brilliance of the material is lost in her mush mouth.

I went back over the weekend to see Nicholas Christopher (excellent actor, sits a bit low in his voice, but he was genuinely terrifying at times in ways that Josh Groban just isn't), and found her performance to be even more exhausting. I managed to purchase an excellent seat in the front of the orchestra and still struggled to understand what Annaleigh was saying, and even more what she was doing. To my eye, there is no through line in her performance. There is no groundedness or humanity. There is just someone trying to squeeze as many laughs out of the audience as possible. And it's just draining to watch.

But like you said, the audience was lapping it up and I'm sure critics will too. I had high hopes for her in this show because I thought she was just beautiful in Sunday in the Park, but this felt like a return to the Kinky Boots style comedy and I did not enjoy it.

It's an uneven production, but at least this past weekend it felt more cohesive than it did at first preview. Still some choices I don't particularly care for, and I'm still not convinced Tommy Kail was the right director here. But still, it's a thrill to hear this music performed (mostly) very well with a full orchestra.

"

 

I also agree with all of this.

Her Lovett is all physical bits and nothing else.  The diction and accent are AWFUL.  She spends so much of the show mugging that when the ending twist is revealed, it's not shocking and she can't switch to 'serious' quickly enough to make it all work.

His Sweeney is 'nicely' sung, but that's not what the role requires.  Watch what Michael Cerveris did in the 2004 revival...  He was magnificent, scary, introspective, haunted, sad.  It was magical watching him.

Audiences don't really seem to care.  His fan club was there, screaming wildly at odd moments and laughing at things that weren't comedy points.  The new Broadway normal.

 

When I saw on on March 5, the line to the ladies reached from the basement to the front right orchestra.  It was crazy, I wonder if the long bathroom lines have anything to do with it.

Re: I’ve heard that the intermission is a little longer than usual. Why is that?

Updated On: 3/24/23 at 03:41 PM

When my wife asked me what my reaction was to the Sweeney Todd revival was after we saw it last week, my very first reaction was a single word: "mixed." I've been mulling over why that was, and while I liked the revival more than many of you, I agree with a lot of your points because they bothered me too.

1 - Annaleigh Ashford, who I had never seen in anything before, gets off to a fantastic start. Her entrance is more memorable than Sweeney Todd's in a show known for its striking Todd entrances. But the very things that worked for much of the first act yield diminishing returns as the show progresses. She seems less devious and practical than clownish and over the top. And there's the problem I had from the outset: I often couldn't understand her. I care less about whether she does a proper Cockney accent, because people doing good Cockney accents are often hard for me to understand anyway. But for all the complaints about the orchestra's volume, or lack thereof, she was sometimes hard to hear - and the accent issues didn't help. Not always, and not enough to really matter, given my familiarity with the lyrics. But that seems like a big strike against her performance, especially in a Stephen Sondheim show in which language is so very important. Her Homer Simpson antics during "A Little Priest" took me out of the song briefly. And when she's reacting to others more in the second act after "By the Sea," it doesn't quite work as well as it should. I liked many things about Ashford's performance, and she interjected fun into the proceedings and made the role her own. I just had mixed feelings about it, especially in retrospect. It's odd to say that, with time to reflect, she is both the most brilliant, daring thing about the revival and one of its biggest flaws.

2 - Josh Groban. I have seen him before, in Great Comet, and was both pleased and not surprised that Sondheim was a fan of that musical. He may improve over time, but on the night I saw him (March 15), Groban didn't achieve for me what he has said in interviews he set out to do: portray a wronged man becoming a monster. At the same time, Groban is terrific as a singer, and I can still hear his haunting rendition of "My Friends" in my head. Portraying Sweeney Todd is as much an acting challenge as a singing one, but it was great to hear him working with the orchestra. I hope he improves at the rest of it.

3 - The remainder of the main cast. The standouts, for me, were Gaten Matazarro as Tobias, Nicholas Christopher as Pirelli, Ruthie Ann Miles as the Beggar Woman, and John Rapson as Beadle Bamford. Jamie Jackson is fine as Judge Turpin. I didn't have the problem so many others had with Jordan Fisher, but he struggled at times. Maria Bilbao has a lovely voice as Johanna.

4, Set design, costumes, lighting, costumes, orchestra, et cetera. The set is functional but not as imaginative as the original. Everything is too sleek, even the new barber's chair. The costuming for Mrs. Lovett was odd. She doesn't look as down and out as she should at the start, nor does her dress improve much with her fortunes. Everyone except for the Beggar Woman looks too good. There's no grime, no soot, no texture. The lighting was effective. I was sitting in Row O of the orchestra and no problem hearing the music. There may have been something missing, but I'm not good enough at music to place it, and my expectations for the orchestra may have been unrealistic. There were a couple of songs on which the tempo seemed either too fast or too slow (wasn't sure why, or if my mind was playing tricks). The ensemble was effective, adding the right level of unsettling creepiness.

5. Direction. It was a traditional revival. Outside of Ashford's performance, no one did anything terribly surprising. Thomas Kail's vision for this show was a cautious one, and that may work for the musical as a commercial venture. But it did lack a sense of danger, of horror, of a feeling you were experiencing something genuinely disturbing that comments on the human condition even via a melodrama. Others who have seen many incarnations of Sweeney Todd may have felt like they'd seen it all before, only better. But I haven't seen this musical with a full orchestra and a collection of top Broadway talent. Even with my qualms, I liked the revival and am very glad I got a chance to see it. I just didn't love it as much as I had hoped.

Updated On: 3/25/23 at 04:10 AM

The complaints about Annaleigh’s dialogue getting lost is a total product of her being in television for the past few years since SITP. And in her comedic bits, it’s like she’s making up for Josh’s more introspective take on Sweeney. Which I don’t mind as much as others, but when Annaleigh is spinning herself in circles on the floor for laughs, the result is uncomfortably off balance. 

Im seeing it again this weekend and hope that some of my gripes have been smoothed out. But this production feels like they’re just *doing* Sweeney Todd. It doesn’t have a point of view. It’s a fine production of an masterpiece show. 

And sorry, not a single person on that stage is believably poor. They look like upper middle class suburbanites putting on the show. The characters that inhabit this story are desperate, willing to stop at nothing to survive. I didn’t believe that for a second of any of them frankly. Including Ruthie’s beggar woman. She looked like she had a long night at a wedding in the 80s. 

All in all I feel like this wasn’t produced/directed with detailed attention to the script. There are weird choices that distract from some of the most disturbing pieces. Ladies and Their Sensitivities comes to mind. The power/disturbing aspect of that song is that two old men are pontificating about taking advantage of young girls. Yet we have ensemble women bathed in technicolor pink and blue crossing and posing like they’re being shot for a fashion mag. It just screams they don’t trust the text. Same with the horrid choreography in the opening and closing number. It gives the dance sequence in M3GAN. And not in a disturbing way. 

Two questions. One, do you (general) think Groban’s performance would work in a more intimate setting, like Teeney Todd or Burrow Street productions?

Second, and I know nothing about sound design so it’s a genuine question….how are there consistently shows with really obvious sound issues? I just don’t get it. First week or so of previews, sure. It just seems crazy to me that there are sound engineers in the building, often in the back of house even, how are they not hearing this? How do they not know that the sound isn’t ‘there’ yet? I’m forgetting the other recent production that had less than desirable sound, but it was like that all through previews and after opening too. I’m probably way in over my head in regards to technology, but are the systems not adequate? 

GiantsInTheSky2 said: "Two questions. One, do you (general) think Groban’s performance would work in a more intimate setting, like Teeney Todd or Burrow Street productions?"

My gut tells me yes as I think the degree to which he is menacing or threatening would be more easily seen and maybe felt? 

I don't hold him to the standard of Michael Cerveris, whose natural physicality and look gave him an edge up in the menacing department that was then amplified by his costumes (full-length black leather jacket makes almost anyone look badass) and vocal performance.  Groban just doesn't really have any of those going for him as strongly.