Sweeney Todd - An Average Joe review
Posted by Jeremy on February 11th, 2008
As an early Valentine’s Day present, Mishka surprised me with tickets to go see John Doyle’s production of Sweeney Todd this Sunday at the State Theater. After reading many reviews, from the Pioneer Press to the Star Tribune to the Rake, one thing seemed to be certain - if you know the story ahead of time, you’ll like it. Otherwise, you’ll be a tad confused. I’ve seen the story, both in a small production years ago and the movie that just came out. My thoughts on it?
Before I tell you, I’d like to point out one reason I love Minnesota. In Uptown, we just so happen to have a salon called Sweeney Todds. I kid you not - they even have a website1
Anyway, after sitting through Doyle’s version2 of Sweeney Todd (There are many variations - here’s an overview) I have to say I quite like it!
Granted, it took me about halfway through ACT 1 to get over the corruption that Tim Burton did, but after that, I went with the flow.
Sweeney Todd normally has a very ornate stage, with lots of props - the barber chair being the focus point of the whole thing. Not only was there no barber chair, there wasn’t much of a stage either - with a large shelf in the back, loaded with lots of items - some used as props, others lit up at certain points to help you understand what’s going on.
And that is sorely needed.
If you don’t know the story of Sweeney Todd beforehand, it would be fairly difficult to follow - upstairs is nothing more then a few steps up a ladder, the bakehouse is nothing more then a door in the backstage - but if you know it, it is quite a refreshing take on it. I felt that Mrs. Lovett didn’t really start shining until the second act, but Sweeney was excellent the whole way through.
Johanna and Anthony though, I thought were the weak spots. Johanna’s voice, while very beautiful, lacked that ‘virginal’ quality to it that the character is supposed to betray. And the young Anthony wasn’t very convincing considering he had a receding hairline!
But, to be fair, considering that the actors also played all the instruments throughout the play it was totally expected that they couldn’t exactly dialin all of the parts. It would be hard to find an expert Cello player that also sang as a soprano AND was 17 years old. So I commend them!
Overall, it was done quite well - I just had to get over the Burton corruption.
Footnotes listed in the above post: