In a Broadway season that will be remembered for its captivating simplicity, with productions like “A Doll’s House” starring Jessica Chastain and the concert-style presentations of “Into the Woods” and “Parade,” director Thomas Kail’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” stands out for its unapologetic ambition. This revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler masterpiece is a theatrical event that aims for greatness and undeniably achieves it. With a flawless cast led by Josh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford, and “Stranger Things” star Gaten Matarazzo, who delivers a stunning performance of the beautiful song “Not While I’m Around,” this revival makes a strong case for “Sweeney” being Sondheim’s greatest work.
But that’s not all. The creative team behind this production is top-tier, with director Thomas Kail, known for his work on “Hamilton,” skillfully combining grand theatricality with attention to even the smallest character details. Choreographer Steven Hoggett, known for his work on “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child,” brings an unstoppable momentum to “Sweeney” through movement, with the ensemble of Victorian townsfolk moving in perfect synchronization one moment and chaotic disarray the next.
One of the most thrilling moments of the show is the opening number of Act II, “God, That’s Good!” The townsfolk fill the pie shop, their expressions of delight mixing with eerie convulsions as they unknowingly consume their fellow Londoners. It’s a chilling and mesmerizing scene that showcases the brilliance of the direction, choreography, and ensemble performance.
For those unfamiliar with the backstory of “Sweeney,” the character is based on a popular figure from 19th Century London penny dreadfuls. This bloodthirsty barber, armed with a razor, is brought to life in Sondheim’s masterful storytelling.s attention when the composer attended a 1973 play adaptation by Christopher Bond. Sondheim teamed with librettist Hugh Wheeler and director Harold Prince to present the 1979 musical, one of the composer’s most operatic, that starred Len Cariou as Sweeney and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, a production that would take on near-mythical status in Broadway lore.
, The musical has been performed many times since, both on Broadway and Off, usually in scaled-back versions that forestall any direct comparison to the big, fully orchestrated production of ’79., Until now. Kail, Groban and Ashford throw caution to the wind and dare to meet Sweeney on its own outsized, baked-in-the-pie terms, and emerge bloody victorious. Grammy-magnet Groban, his baritone put to even better use than in his eye-opening 2016 Broadway debut as the star of the gone-way-too-soon Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, makes himself over into a full-blown, and fully developed, Broadway star, his performance living up to every shriek and cry from the army of diehard Grobanites that greet his entrance at the Lunt-Fontanne. His Sweeney is by turns sympathetic and monstrous – mostly the latter, as it should be: Sweeney Todd, once London’s greatest barber, now its most fiendish, after a 15-year false imprisonment, his wife raped and left for dead, and his baby daughter stolen and raised by the judge behind every misfortune. , Meeting Groban’s performance every step of the way is Ashford (Sunday in the Park With George, TV’s Smash), beautifully shouldering most of the musical’s comedy elements – her timing is beat-perfect, her Cockney accent a treasure – and her superb vocals blend so well with Groban’s that we’re left hoping for an album of show tune duets as a follow-up to the inevitable Sweeney cast recording. , So the story progresses. Sweeney, escaped from prison by sea, arrives in London 15 years after his banishment, returning to the home he once shared with his wife and daughter, his former barbershop now made over as a meat pie shop by one Mrs. Nellie Lovett. With meat scarce, the shop is failing (as Lovett explains in the droll “The Worst Pies in London”), but soon enough Sweeney’s revenge fantasies and Lovett’s dreams of financial security merge into one fantastical, cannibalistic scheme: The demon barber will slit the throats of his enemies (a list that grows to encompass all of mankind) and the baker will use the byproduct to stuff her confections. , Before long, Sweeney and Lovett have no end of demand for their oddly delicious pies, and they even take on an assistant, the orphan Tobias (Matarazzo, well-advisedly replacing the character’s usual and potentially offensive dimwittedness for a simple, sweet naivete that works exceedingly well). , A subplot concerns Sweeney’s now-marriageable daughter Johanna (soprano Maria Bilbao, making a fine Broadway debut) and her secret beau Anthony (the appealing Jordan Fisher of Dear Evan Hansen and TV’s Rent: Live). Neither Johanna nor Sweeney’s pal Anthony know of the girl’s true parentage, and besides they have worries of their own: Johanna is kept, Rapunzel-like, locked up by the protective – and lascivious – judge who raised her. , Here is as good a place as any to focus on set designer Mimi Lien’s wondrous, multi-tiered creation: Bilbao’s Johanna is most often seen locked away high above – sometimes very high above – the main action of the musical, just as Sweeney’s barbarism (no pun intended) is typically kept to the second-tier shop centered by the famous trick barber’s chair that dispatches the dead through a chute delivering the ready-for-grinding bodies directly to Mrs. Lovett’s basement bakehouse. Victorian London was nothing if not hierarchical.
, Just as she did with her theater-filling design for Great Comet, Lien here uses every inch of space in the vast performance area of the immense and regal Lunt-Fontanne. Beneath a large, soot-grimed brick archway and a metal bridge that serves a multitude of uses, Lien’s encapsulation of Victorian gloom includes a humongous, working crane that teeters ominously over the proceedings and, at times, over the audience, the very symbol of a new, crushing modernity, a mechanism as dehumanizing as it is functional. , The set is part and parcel of an impeccable creative effort that includes Emilio Sosa’s costumes, Natasha Katz’s spooky German Expressionist lighting design, J. Jared Janas’ spot-on wig, hair and makeup designs, some thrilling special effects courtesy of Jeremy Chernick and Nevin Steinberg’s sound design that gives vivid life and breadth to Jonathan Tunick’s full-bodied orchestrations., Even in this creative environment, and with musical numbers that rank among Sondheim’s greatest – just a sampling: “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” “Poor Thing,” “Johanna,” “Pretty Women,” “Not While I’m Around” and that comic gem “A Little Priest” – a cast could have any number of opportunities to misfire. Sweeney Todd is a vocally challenging work, to say the least, and its razor’s edge balance of brutality and comedy in both score and book could draw blood on any but the most capable performers., This production needn’t worry about that. The large cast is without a weak link. Groban, Ashford and Matarazzo would be well-advised to start thinking about what they’ll wear to this year’s Tony ceremony (though competition in the musical categories is going to be fierce). Bilbao and Fisher are up to the challenge of holding our interest when Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett aren’t around, and Jamie Jackson as Judge Turpin and John Rapson as Beadle Bamford are everything you could want in Victorian villainy and musical harmony. Ruthie Ann Miles, as the beggar woman with secrets of her own, is, as always, a delight, whether singing (“No Place Like London”) or warning, Cassandra-like, of “Mischief! Mischief! Mischief!”, Much has been made over the years about Sondheim’s disagreements with Prince over the presentation and even the meaning of Sweeney Todd, with the composer forever insisting that the story was a specific, personal tale of a man’s obsession for revenge, while Prince saw something larger, more expansive, with Sweeney and his fellow Londoners caught up in history’s grinder of industrialism. In this latest revival of the many-layered work, Kail and his company of actors and designers have managed to serve both masters, delivering, with all the efficiency of that multipurpose barber chair, a Sweeney Todd that is as particular as it is sweeping, and as captivating in sight as it is magnificent in sound., Title: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Venue: Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Director: Thomas Kail
Book: Hugh Wheeler
Music & Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
Principal Cast: Josh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford, Jordan Fisher, Gaten Matarazzo, Ruthie Ann Miles, Maria Bilbao, Jamie Jackson, John Rapson, Nicholas Christopher.
Running time: 2 hr 45 min (including intermission),
