Swooning—Once Again—For "Sweeney Todd"

People always ask people like me—people who've been blessed with the opportunity to see lots and lots of shows—what our favorites are. I tend to hem and haw when it comes to plays (sometimes it’s How I Learned to Drive; sometimes it’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone; other times it’s Death of a Salesman or Long Day’s Journey Into Night). But there’s no question when it comes to my favorite musical: it’s Sweeney Todd. 

Before its latest revival opened last week, I’d seen five major productions of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s masterful retelling of the tale of the barber who goes on a throat-slitting spree while seeking revenge on the judge who destroyed his life when he sentenced the barber to a penal colony on falsified charges, ravaged his wife and virtually imprisoned their young daughter Johanna under the guise of making her the judge’s ward. It’s melodrama at its best and the score is arguably (or at least I would argue) Sondheim’s greatest. Which, of course, is saying something.

Knowing of my deep love for the show, my dear husband K worried that I might be let down by this new production that stars Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. So I’m both delighted and relieved to be able to say that this Sweeney lived up to, and maybe even surpassed, my expectations.

Now I wasn’t the only one who had worried. Some skeptics had predicted that Groban, an émigré from the pop world who has sold over 25 million records, wouldn’t be up to the challenge of playing such a demanding stage role. But a truly great role—and Sweeny Todd is a great role—can be interpreted in many ways (click here to read about how some have done it). 

Groban, who studied theater before becoming a pop star (click here to learn more about him) doesn’t try to be as wild-eyed or scary as some of his predecessors have played the part. Instead he leans into the disorienting, almost numbing, grief that all the tragic things that have happened might trigger in Sweeney. And for me, it was easier to feel the pain of this more human-sized man. 

Plus, there’s Groban’s glorious baritone. He sings the hell out of Sondheim’s almost operatic arias, including "Epiphany," which rivals the famous "Soliloquy" that Sondheim's mentor Oscar Hammerstein and his partner Richard Rodgers wrote for their bad boy Billy Bigelow in Carousel.

On the other hand, almost no one doubted that Annaleigh Ashford would be right for Sweeney’s loony landlady and partner-in-crime Mrs. Lovett, who not only tolerates his butchery of the men who climb into his barber’s chair but comes up with the idea of baking their remains into the pies that she sells in her shop downstairs. 

Ashford has been working her way through some of the best comedic roles in the Broadway canon over the past decade and a half and picked up a Tony award along the way. Here she crafts a Mrs. Lovett who is earthier and more antic than the iconic character that Angela Lansbury created in the original 1979 production but one who is just as endearing. 

Together, Ashford and Groban make such a symbiotic and sexy pair that you’re almost rooting for them to make it. Which, in turn, makes the end of their relationship all the more poignant. 

In fact almost all the principal actors in the cast play the emotions of their characters, rather than broadly portraying them as the stock figures in the cheap 19th century penny dreadfuls in which Sweeney’s story was first told. 

In her Broadway debut, Maria Bilbao uses her soaring soprano to underscore the captive Johanna’s yearning to escape the cage in which the judge has entrapped her. Meanwhile Gaten Matarazzo mines every bit of pathos from the vain promise that Tobias, the boy who works in the pie shop, makes to Mrs. Lovett that nothing will harm her while he’s around. And Ruthie Ann Miles turns the neighborhood Beggar Woman into the haunting presence she was always meant to be.

But when you get right down to it, the score has always been the true star of Sweeney Todd.  And here, it’s performed by a 26-member orchestra, playing the magnificent original orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick (who, in full disclosure, is a family friend but who is also the indisputable dean of Broadway orchestrators). This is a show you could enjoy with your eyes closed.

Of course, you don’t have to and for that I’m going to give props to director Thomas Kail. At a time when so many directors seem hell bent on showing that they're auteurs who can put their distinctive stamp on any show, Kail, whose inventive staging for Hamilton proves that he can stamp with the best of them, has taken an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach here: he isn’t copying Hal Prince’s original concept but he isn’t wiggling away from it either. 

Kail roots his Sweeney firmly in Victorian London and he’s brought in Natasha Katz to supply the moody lighting for Mimi Lien’s deceptively simple set and movement master Steven Hoggett to devise some smart choreography for the large ensemble, which has been handsomely dressed by Emilio Sosa. 

I could go on and on but I'm going to give the final words to Sondheim himself and if you're a theater lover, you'll heed them: Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.