Attend the tale of 'Sweeney Todd'
The masses may prefer Harold Prince's meatier "Sweeney Todd," but adventurous gourmets will relish John Doyle's leaner yet still savory re-imagining of the masterful 1979 musical.
A pared-down version of the Prince original, Doyle's high-concept, 2005 Broadway revival reduces the 30-member cast and 27-member orchestra to a total of 10 actor/musicians. The financial constraints that prompted Doyle to cast singer/actors as instrumentalists for the show's original London production required musical supervisor Sarah Travis to radically re-orchestrate Stephen Sondheim's score. While less sumptuous, the reduction in no way diminishes Sondheim's gorgeous music. In fact, it enhances its colors (as well as its meticulous dissonance) much as Malcolm Ruhl's reduction enhanced ATC's "Oklahoma" and Doug Peck's enhanced Court Theatre's "Carousel."
The robustly sung and expertly acted national tour is led by the compelling David Hess, who won a 2007 Jeff Award winner for Marriott's "Shenandoah." He's haunted and anguished as Sweeney, the barber unjustly exiled to an Australian penal colony, who returns years later to take revenge on the corrupt judge who destroyed his life and family. The macabre tale details his murderous spree slicing and dicing his enemies, who wind up as filling for meat pies.
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Co-starring in this national tour is the wonderful Judy Kaye, comically radiant as Mrs. Lovett, the aging tart who serves as Sweeney's accomplice. The cast, comprised mostly of veterans from the Broadway production, is impressive, minor lapses in diction and intonation notwithstanding. Kudos to Benjamin Eakeley's Beadle, an icy enforcer with an angelic voice; Edmund Bagnell's earnest Tobias, the unhinged young man who relates the bloody tale from a ramshackle psychiatric facility; Lauren Molina's delicately twittering Johanna and Benjamin Magnuson's heroic, golden-voiced Anthony.
The problem, and it's a minor one, rests with the storytelling. While inventive, it sometimes gets in the way of the narrative. The enigmatic, occasionally fussy staging makes for intriguing stage pictures, but I found it distracting. The actors playing instruments and clambering atop coffins and ladders diverted my attention from the music and story. And if any musical deserves one's full attention, it's this magnificently composed meditation on people consumed by their passions.
Moreover, the 2,344-seat Cadillac Palace Theatre overwhelms the show, which is better suited to a smaller venue. That said, while it lacks the grandeur of Lyric Opera of Chicago's 2002 production or the intimacy of Porchlight Music Theatre's exquisite chamber version from 2004, Doyle's atmospheric, "Sweeney Todd" remains an undeniably arresting treat.
"Sweeney Todd"
3 1/2 stars
out of four
Location: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St., Chicago
Times: 8 p.m. today and May 2; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and May 3; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday and 2 p.m. May 4
Running Time: About 2 hours, 20 minutes with intermission
Tickets: $25-$75
Parking: Paid lots nearby
Box office: (312) 902-1400 or broadwayinchicago.com
Rating: For adults