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| "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: student_rush 09:29 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| "La'ies and gentlemen, may I have your attention paLEASE? Welcome, welcome, welcome to SWEENEY TODD: THE EXPERIENCE™ - buckle your seat belts and put on your 3D glasses, and come into me shop!" "Sweeney" at Barrow Street plays like a two-act SNL sketch, where every moment is played to mine - or create - the most broad comic bits possible. The funny moments in the script are now FUNNY! and the more serious moments are often staged as if by Monty Python or Forbidden Broadway. There is no balance between light and dark in this production - minimal production values and a lazy "theatricality" account for all the deaths in this version, often coming across as something you'd find from a community theatre director or college student production. A small collection of actors wear silly hats and use silly voices - acting! The Beadle? A fop! The Judge? Fop-esque! The Beggar Woman? She's saucy because she rubs her crotch! And watch out - they might turn and reach towards your face or rub your head ... AHH! Carolee and Hugh deliver great performances, but deserve better. I kept expecting Ed Helms' 'Andy Bernard' from "The Office" to pop out and sing a verse - or offer me a bite of pie ... or something equally immersive! I love concept-heavy productions, as the best ones will illuminate something about the piece that had perhaps hitherto gone unnoticed. Nothing about setting this inside a pie shop brings a new color to "Sweeney Todd" - and even this conceit felt half-baked (pun very much intended). Why would there be three musicians sitting in the corner of a pie shop? Why couldn't the audience have entered or used some of the entrances and stairs used by the actors? Why establish candlelight, only to be blown out and replaced with traditional theatre lighting after twenty minutes? Why differentiate the space for Pirelli's tent, and no other locations? Why make the audience leave at intermission to "reconfigure" the shop ... when the only change consisted of hanging three "PIE" signs? "Sweeney" is perhaps my favorite Sondheim score, so to attempt to re-contexualize this dark comedy as a broad FUNNY "wink wink nudge nudge" piece of English pantomime is discouraging and uninspired. |
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| I loved the pie shop | |
| Posted by: Christopher 02:45 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - student_rush 09:29 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| My only complaint was how much of the score they cut. | |
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| re: "Carolee and Hugh deliver great performances, but deserve better" | |
| Posted by: Dale 01:52 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - student_rush 09:29 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| Better than Sondheim??? | |
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| re: "Carolee and Hugh deliver great performances, but deserve better" | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 12:58 pm EST 01/20/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Carolee and Hugh deliver great performances, but deserve better" - Dale 01:52 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| I think it's clear they meant they deserve better than the production around them. | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: davei2000 01:33 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - student_rush 09:29 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| I like it more than you, but it does seem mostly a way to produce Sweeney Todd on the cheap, making a "concept" of the constrained space. | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 11:50 am EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - student_rush 09:29 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| I haven't seen this production, and likely won't because it's kept it's tickets quite expensive and I lose their lottery every time I'm in town... But even from the announcement it was a bit baffling to me. It makes no sense dramatically to set the entire show, which is by no means all in one location, in the one location of the pie shop. It doesn't even start there. Hell Sweeney doesn't even live IN the pie shop. And it certainly doesn't, as a concept, illuminate anything new or interesting. I've never understood the point of doing this, or why people thought it was cool. But I've tried, while not seeing it, to keep an open mind and assume maybe it could work in a way I don't expect... but intellectually I don't get why you'd see or hear or read this show and think "this would be amazing if the whole thing were set in the pie shop". Perhaps if the show were rewritten as an entertainment to pie shop customers, who are being served pies that they eventually start to realize must be humans. But that's not how the show is written. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: dlevy 01:06 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Chazwaza 11:50 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| You're missing an important distinction. The show is *performed* in a pie shop. That doesn't mean it's *set* in a pie shop. What makes it interesting or thrilling (to some of us) is the intimacy and minimalism of the production. It's okay if that's not your thing. | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 02:59 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - dlevy 01:06 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| It's not that it's not my thing - I love intimacy and i can get down with minimalism applied to something not necessarily written to be minimalist... I'm just saying you don't need to set it in the pie shop in order to do that. However, I would like to see this production just to see how it works, and also because I love this piece. I just don't get, conceptually, why, in the reality of this production, why the show is being performed in a pie shop. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: dlevy 03:22 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Chazwaza 02:59 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| In the reality of this production, it originated in an actual pie shop in Tooting. The Arts Club that first produced it has a mission that involves collaborating with local businesses. There's a local pie shop, so on some level, it makes sense that they would choose a musical with a pie shop so central to its plot as the production for that collaboration. That production was wildly successful, so when it transferred, they recreated the whole experience, pie shop and all. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Christopher 03:04 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Chazwaza 02:59 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| Did you get conceptually why the original production was set in a factory? | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 03:43 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Christopher 03:04 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| Umm... 100%. Did you not? | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: MockingbirdGirl 06:37 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Chazwaza 03:43 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| I suspect that Christopher is making the point that if you had no trouble with conceptual space being a factory even though "It makes no sense dramatically to set the entire show, which is by no means all in one location, in the one location," then this shouldn't any more of a stretch. A site-specific production of Sweeney Todd is a good idea. I'm firmly in the "enjoyed it" camp. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:56 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - MockingbirdGirl 06:37 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| But the factory is a metaphor... it's not setting the whole show in one of the actual locations IN the show. It *added* something. I'm not saying it COULDN'T work performing it in a pie shop. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: MockingbirdGirl 09:23 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Chazwaza 08:56 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| Well, as dlevy has pointed out, the whole show isn't set in the pie shop -- it's performed in a pie shop. For instance, the contest with Pirelli still takes place elsewhere. | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 04:29 am EST 01/20/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - MockingbirdGirl 09:23 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
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| Yes - to be fair, I said "performed in" , and otherwise was using dlevy's word... in the original, it isn't all "set" in the factory, it is performed in it, but there are several locations, and the scenes that take place in them take place in them. In fact none of the scenes actually take place in the factor except perhaps the transitions. | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 12:19 pm EST 01/20/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Chazwaza 04:29 am EST 01/20/18 | |
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| What I'm getting from this conversation is that the pie shop has no actual conceptual meaning in this production - it's just a space in which the play is performed. In the original, the factory setting was integral to Prince's understanding of the play and the story it was telling. Whether we need that extra layer of "industrial capitalism is built upon canabalism" is up for debate, but it was central to Prince's story. | |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: singleticket 01:08 pm EST 01/20/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Singapore/Fling 12:19 pm EST 01/20/18 | |
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| Whether we need that extra layer of "industrial capitalism is built upon canabalism" is up for debate, but it was central to Prince's story. Yes, that was definitely what was in the original production. But it didn't feel didactic because much of the way the idea was developed was through production design. And as I remember it there was a kind of Rube Goldberg like slit-throat delivery-system-to-the kitchen that Sweeney had rigged. But that may have been in the original Penny Dreadful/Grande Guignol source material. Even if it was, it was a brilliant layer to the original production because in an instant it was chilling, historical resonant and fun. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Kjisgroovy 11:14 am EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - student_rush 09:29 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| It sounds like we saw different shows... and maybe we did! I saw the cast just as Carolee and Norm joined and it was one of the very best experiences of my somewhat long theater going life. I thought the thing that the "concept" added was the visceral connection to everything. Things were much funnier because of the closeness and interaction (and fear of interaction) I felt things were genuinely scary because of the proximity and uncertainty of how things were going to be staged. I don't think that makes it a "concept" as much as it put the action right at your table. Your questioning of staging choices are more or less beside the point in that way. I don't think the staging choices are "justified" in anyway and I didn't mind that. Different strokes I suppose. Or the production has gotten incredibly broad since I saw it. |
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| re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 02:27 pm EST 01/19/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "Sweeney Todd" (Spoilers) - Kjisgroovy 11:14 am EST 01/19/18 | |
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| "I saw the cast just as Carolee and Norm joined and it was one of the very best experiences of my somewhat long theater going life." Same here. |
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