Tag Archives: Sweeney Todd

BY STEVEN MARK / smark@staradvertiser.com

Revenge is served up with a song, a snicker and a splashy, slashy production this weekend when “Sweeney Todd” takes the Blaisdell stage.

The Hawaii Opera Theatre debut of the award-winning production about the “demon barber of Fleet Street” represents the latest trend in the production of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 triumph, which premiered on Broadway in 1979 and immediately became a staple for musical theater companies. It now has become a hit for opera companies as well, with opera companies in Houston and Vancouver, B.C., staging it currently, and the San Francisco Opera opening their fall season with it.

“This has always been the perennial question: Is this an opera or is it a musical?” said HOT’s guest conductor Adam Turner, artist adviser and principal conductor of Virginia Opera in Norfolk, Va. “A lot of opera companies are coming to the same conclusion at the same time: It really is an operatic piece.

“It’s an incredible piece of theater, but when you put operatic voices in these roles, it really brings something exciting and thrilling to the theatrical element. They just have a way of carrying this text further.”

Turner has conducted two other “Sweeney Todd” productions this year alone, in Virginia and in Oregon. “It’s been really fun to watch over this past year, seeing how these opera singers approach it,” he said.

“Sweeney Todd,” which has been staged by local community theater groups in years past but never by HOT, tells the story of London’s Benjamin Barber, aka Sweeney Todd, who was wrongly accused of a crime and sent to an Australian penal colony, leaving his wife and daughter in dire straits. Upon his return, he swears revenge on those who wronged him. Aided by the scheming Mrs. Lovett (Buffy Baggott), he takes a murderous path.

Thanks to Sondheim’s witty score, that journey is both hilarious and hair-raising.

PETER KENDALL CLARK, praised for “gorgeous” singing when he performed “Sweeney Todd” in Florida in 2012, will make his HOT debut in the title role. As a high-school student preparing for his first musical role, he saw the original Broadway production in 1979, which starred Len Cariou as Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett.

“I remember it was very funny, and also very scary and upsetting and heartbreaking. I remember having all these emotions,” he said. “Angela Lansbury was just so funny. You couldn’t believe how funny she was, and then at the end it was so tragic, just sobbing. Mrs. Lovett gets shoved into the oven. It all seemed so harsh.”

Pairing off with him as Mrs. Lovett, as she did in the Florida production, is Buffy Baggott, who last appeared here in HOT’s 2011 production of “Faust.” She said playing the role, especially in a soothing, relaxing place like Hawaii, has generated mixed emotions.

“As much as fun as we’re having being here, in this beautiful place, rehearsing and having time at the beach, still, we come here (to the Blaisdell) and it’s this really crazy roller coaster of emotions as we rehearse,” she said.

She relishes playing Mrs. Lovett, who cheerfully engages in cannibalism while making the “worst pies in London.” It’s one of the great stage roles, opera or musical.

“She’s got this lovely, almost like a romance novel going on in her head, and has for years, about this man … who was so beautiful and wonderful, and has kept this little romance alive in her dark little heart,” Baggott said. “Maybe she’s not a noble character, but she’s doing what she’s doing for love and for this man.”

OVERALL, “Sweeney Todd” can be seen as an examination of the foibles of humanity under the most extreme circumstances.

“They’re all just scraping by,” Clark said. “I think what’s interesting is that it asks the audience, How far would you have to be pushed before you go over that line? Could you be pushed to murder or pushed beyond what you think of as right?”

Musically, “Sweeney Todd” is also considered a masterpiece, full of haunting but lovely themes and well-crafted lyrics.

Fortunately for English-speaking audiences, none of that will be lost, with everything in English and with supertitles for the songs. The lead characters will be miked to ensure clarity, and the singing should be glorious, with cast members like Hawaii favorite Jamie Offenbach as Judge Turpin, Todd’s ultimate target, and soprano Rachel Schutz doing a quick turnaround from “Siren Song” to return as the angelic Johanna.

“It’s a very complex musical,” said guest director Karen Tiller. “It benefits from having opera singers sing it. It actually needs that musicality.”

Tiller sees Sweeney Todd’s story as a “cautionary tale.”

“Revenge doesn’t usually work out,” she said. “Yet it is a very human emotion. We feel that need for justice, or retribution for an unjust act. And then what does that do to a person?”

This will be a relatively “traditional” production, Tiller said — “Sweeney Todd” has been given some unusual makeovers, such as productions with no orchestra and the singers playing musical instruments onstage — but it will employ new techniques such as projected images for the set design.

The infamous trap-door-loaded barber chair, however, will be presented as per tradition.

“And there is blood,” Tiller said. “You can’t go around slitting throats without blood. But we’re trying to find that balance between art and gross.”