Array
Our eyes don’t normally well up with tears during “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Stephen Sondheim’s horror-musical in which throats are gruesomely slashed and cannibalism is positively hilarious.
But minutes into the new Broadway revival starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford that opened Sunday night at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, I was already verklempt.
Such is the overwhelming experience of hearing Sondheim’s glorious 1979 score in all its splendor played by a 26-person orchestra — not in some cavernous concert hall or opera house, but a real Broadway theater. It’s been a while.
Director John Doyle’s 2005 small-scale actor-musician production with Patti LuPone and the 2017 immersive off-Broadway staging at Barrow Street Theatre were differently wonderful, but director Thomas Kail’s revival packs an unmatched orchestral punch.
That famous first lyric, “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” isn’t so much a suggestion this time, but a full-throated command.
So, off we go with Groban as Sweeney, a Victorian-era London barber who is wrongfully imprisoned by the lecherous judge who covets Todd’s wife, Lucy. Being locked up in faraway Australia turns him into a monster, hellbent on killing Judge Turpin (Jamie Jackson) and Turpin’s smarmy sidekick, the Beadle (John Rapson), back in England. He gets to London, and things turn bloody bloody.
Immediately we realize that Groban is not the menacing, feral Todd that Len Cariou and Michael Cerveris were, but a calmer chap with an ax to grind. This choice cuts both ways. Sweeney is more human, yes, but some scenes lack intensity.
