| "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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