Sweeney Todd - Tony's in its future?? (And reviews!)- Page 6

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 4:44pm

Like I said before, THE COLOR PURPLE has nothing on SWEENEY.

[MoonOnAstring]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 4:45pm

I'm so pleased with these reviews.

Updated On: 11/4/05 at 04:45 PM

[Smaxie]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 5:17pm

I wouldn't necessarily count Tony Awards for Sweeney yet. It first has to have enough staying power to survive the winter and the onslaught of spring musicals. And while I can't imagine The Pajama Game being so revelatory as to defeat Sweeney, who knows yet what's in store with The Threepenny Opera...

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 8:36pm

Yeah, I forgot about The Threepenny Opera...but Alan Cumming is probably the LAST of the A-list Broadway actors that I would ever cast as Macheath...and Edie Falco as Jenny? I smell a turkey in the oven.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 8:58pm

I wouldn't hold my breath for Scott Eliott's THREEPENNY to be revelatory after his take on THE WOMEN, but who knows. I think the cast at least sounds fascinating.

[bigrab1018]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 11:43pm

I definitely think Michael Cerveris could beat out Harry Connnick, Jr.

He will definitely win. It will also win for orchestrations, lighting, and revival. I think that's all it will win.

[bigrab1018]

Posted: 11/4/05 at 11:43pm

I definitely think Michael Cerveris could beat out Harry Connnick, Jr.

He will definitely win. It will also win for orchestrations, lighting, and revival. I think that's all it will win.

Updated On: 11/5/05 at 11:43 PM

[bigrab1018]

Posted: 11/5/05 at 12:18am

Anyone agree?

[InTheRed]

Posted: 11/5/05 at 1:17am

Best Show Ever!

[Smaxie]

Posted: 11/5/05 at 9:37am

I haven't loved Scott Eliott's work in the past, and really hated The Women in particular. But still, I learned a valuable lesson last year not to dismiss some projects in advance. Different Scott, but I never expected to be so captivated by Scott Ellis's Twelve Angry Men. You just never know. The Threepenny casting is so strange already, it could be a really interesting evenig...

[riv]

Posted: 11/5/05 at 11:53am

Well, there's no denying that Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street is a great musical. Thanks to the strength of the material, it has managed to survive the minimalist treatment seemingly being imposed on all of Stephen Sondheim's canon nowadays.

I'll be fair and say the "innovative" idea behind this production works somewhat better than it initally sounded. Unfortunately, Broadway musicals lose more by stripping away their grandeur than they acquire in bare-bones "purity."

Sondheim, like all Broadway composers worth their salt, writes Big. To see him Not-Big is to not see him properly. The full force of works such as Sweeney Todd, while acceptably done if one approaches this revival on a lowered level of expectations, is frankly lost.

Once in a while, productions like this are no problem. However, when they threaten to become the norm, we're in trouble. On the heels of the small scale Pacific Overtures last season, not to mention Follies before that a few years previous, this is becoming a trend worth dumping as soon as possible.

Any bets on which Sondheim musical shall next be stripped of its spectacle and have all the critics ludicrously claiming it should have been a chamber-musical all along?

Thank heavens I got in for only $50. Half-price for half-scale sounds about right to me. Interesting how mini-productions continue having the audacity to charge $100 bucks. Talk about nerve.


Updated On: 11/5/05 at 11:53 AM

[MoonOnAstring]

Posted: 11/5/05 at 2:10pm

What this production loses in spectacle, it makes up for in other things... brilliant re-interpretations of character, great lighting, symbolism, emotional resonance. Also Sondheim himself originall saw this show as a "small" and intimate show, not an epic theatrical production.

I can't only talk for myself, but I would have paid twice as much as I paid to see this show. In fact, I am going again in a few months.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/6/05 at 3:12am

Thought it was worth mentioning John Simon liked it too:

"When is a musical a surefire classic? When it keeps being revived? Sort of. Performed in an opera house? Very likely. Completely rethought by a director and coming across almost totally new? Definitely.

This is the case with the new version of Stephen Sondheim's ``Sweeney Todd,' imported from England (though now with an American cast) at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. John Doyle, who conceived, designed and directed it, has been the artistic director of various British regional theaters. Manifestly, he was obliged to do ``Sweeney' with fewer performers, much less scenery, in a smaller theater on a more modest budget.

Earlier attempts at economizing foundered on trying to miniaturize Harold Prince's large-scale original Broadway production -- rather like a provincial circus, lacking an elephant, pressing into service a cow bedizened with a papier mache trunk and tusks.

Red for Murder

There was always that hand-me-down look, which Doyle strove to avoid. So, first off, he rethought the show with a cast of ten, all of whom could, besides singing and acting, play one or more instruments, obviating an orchestra. So he got Sarah Travis to deftly reorchestrate the score for such a multitasking ensemble.

Next, he and his lighting designer, Richard G. Jones, devised a set that is mostly one huge grid or vertical latticework -- slats all the way up -- with light coming through the chinks full force, dimmed or, for the murders, red.

On the middle part of the grid, likewise stretching all the way up, they placed shelving, stacked with a multitude of objects suggestive of everyday life, some lighting up when mentioned in the plot. They also created a multipurpose platform and a similarly versatile coffin. Finally, the costumes were unobtrusively modernized. Much of the action, of course, had to be stylized rather than naturalistic. And, miracle of miracles, it works.

With Michael Cerveris (the scariest and most suffering Sweeney yet) and Patti LuPone (as you have never seen or heard her before) in the leads, the entire cast works vocal, histrionic and instrumental wonders. It undeniably helps a bit if you are familiar with the plot; but, apart from that, this is a triumph for all concerned."


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_us&refer=culture&sid=a5Ng8FAVhtU4

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/6/05 at 3:15am

Feingold of the Voice is Mixed:

"John Doyle's extremely eccentric but never foolish production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd is a ticklish proposition, arousing wild enthusiasm and equally wild distaste. The divided reaction is understandable: Although Doyle treats the work with somber dignity, certain aspects of his production, like the fact that its small cast doubles as its orchestra, give it the air of a vaudeville stunt. Then, too, although Doyle's somber approach involves keeping the stage largely bare and movement sparse, the performers' constant need to switch from acting to instrumentating and back again creates a whole independent set of stage conventions that have nothing to do with the action of Sondheim's music drama, so that the images Doyle envisioned are constantly at war with the images that make orchestral concerts fun to watch, so that what began as bareness can get to seem absurdly cluttered. Performers have to rise from the dead to pick up a flute, or scrape away on a cello downstage center while they're supposedly in hiding. As Mrs. Lovett, Patti LuPone at one point has to alternate snapping out some of Sondheim's trickiest lyrics with puffing into a tuba, to provide orchestral buttons to her own punchlines. She plays it very well (as Anna Russell said about Hunding), but watching her manage the ingenious switch is not the same as watching a performance of Sweeney Todd.
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The blood that we never see Sweeney shed seems to be concentrated in a single symbolic bucket downstage right, presumably on loan from the Peter Brook Museum. (Internet chatterers have been calling the show Marat/Todd.)

The gnomic images add an outré tone to what otherwise can seem at times a rather drab evening of concertizing and logistics. You can generally follow Sweeney Todd's story, but very few moments have any dramatic effect: We get what happens, but we often don't see the way it happens. The physical staging is largely static (have to be careful of those instruments), the overall atmosphere one of careful efficiency, rather than either the extreme passion of melodrama or the eerieness that you would expect the haunted-asylum concept to evoke. This puts the burden of proof, dramatically speaking, on Sondheim's score, which holds up mightily well. Sarah Travis's ingeniously reduced orchestration turns this big, sweeping piece into a taut, modernistically dry chamber work, à la Poulenc or Stravinsky. The difficulty is that skillful instrumentalists aren't necessarily the best singers or actors: Lauren Molina's cello bowing, for instance, is a good deal steadier than her vocal intonation as Johanna; Benjamin Magnuson, her Anthony, both sings and plays cello convincingly, but makes the character a drippy suburban mama's boy rather than a seasoned young sailor. On the other hand, Mark Jacoby registers strongly as both Judge Turpin and trumpet, while Donna Lynne Champlin is both a credible flutist and an unlikely but saucy Pirelli. A big shortcoming, not to be blamed on the orchestra gimmick, is that Michael Cerveris's weak, grainy singing is never a match for the tough, coldly inward Sweeney his acting creates–itself problematic in lacking the creepy charm the part requires. As for LuPone, New York's most famous novice tubist sings effectively, but has not yet found her way deeply into the role, which she and most of the others could probably do if the instrumentalists were removed to the pit, and this Sweeney were more of a production."


http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0545,feingold,69746,11.html