Theater Review: 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'

Ben Miles

The musical thriller, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” is adapted from Christopher Bond’s 1973 melodrama of the same title.

With music and lyrics by the estimable Stephen Sondheim with a book by Hugh Wheeler, the eerily melodic version of “Sweeney” premiered on Broadway in 1979, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. Since that spectacular debut, Sweeney has had many staged revivals and was made into a film starring Johnny Depp.

Now SoCal audiences have the opportunity to see a live version of this tale of the deadly tonsorial practitioner on the Segerstrom Stage of Costa Mesa’s South Coast Rep through Feb. 16. With meticulous direction by Kent Nicholson and exquisitely timed musical direction of a seven-member orchestra by David O, this “Sweeney” – though set in 19th century London – serves as a metaphor for our age of cannibalistic corporate capitalism and chaotic politics, or as the lyric of one of the show’s songs suggests, who gets eaten and who gets to eat?

Sweeney Todd is the sobriquet for Benjamin Barker (played with impressive stage-bearing and vocal resonance by David St. Louis), a skilled barber handy with razors and other tools of the tonsorial trade, who was exiled by the unethical Judge Turpin (a menacing Robert Mammana) who lusted after Todd’s wife, Lucy, raped her and made Todd’s daughter a ward of the court under the supervision of who else but Judge Turpin himself? Turpin is aided in these extra-legal efforts by his court officer Beadle Bradford (a cruelly comical embodiment by Nicholas Mongriardo-Cooper).

The exposition is engrossingly presented by a young sailor, Anthony Hope (a vocally attuned and dramatically sympathetic Devin Archer), who rescued Todd from the sea and Mrs. Lovett (performed with an abundance of charisma and vocal abilities by Jamey Hood) who is the proprietor of a meat pie shop cursed by a scaricity of customers.

The backstory and foreshadowing are conveyed through song and dance numbers such as “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” “No Place Like London,” “The Worst Pies in London,” “Poor Thing,” and “My Friends.”

This gory story of payback, revenge and, inevitably blowback (after all as Newton’s Third Law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) is a haunting and often humorous morality musical. The emotions hit hard in the form of laughter and even, surprisingly (for this writer), tears.

With impeccable stagecraft (John Iacovelli, scenic design; Melanie Watnick,costuming; mood-shifting lighting by Lap Chi Chu, a pulse-raising soundscape by Cricket Myers, and clever and maniacal choreography by Kelly Todd) homicide is made disturbingly watchable.

Keep an eye out for the performances of Roland Rusinek as Adolfo Pirelli, Conlan Ledworth as Tobias Ragg, Julianna Hansen as Johanna, and Erica Hanrahan-Ball as the begger woman. They provide memorable characterizations in this singular and spectacular production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” continues at South Coast Rep through Feb. 16. SCR is located at 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, 92626. For reservations, call (714) 708-5555. For online ticketing and further information, visit www.scr.ogr.

ben@beachcomber.news

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