Edward Gero and Sherri L. Edelen star in Signature Theatre’s 20th anniversary production of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘‘Sweeney Todd.”
If you have fond recollections of the two previous stagings of Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim’s ‘‘Sweeney Todd,” at Signature Theatre, the company’s current incarnation won’t dislodge them. That’s not to say the 2010 ‘‘Sweeney Todd” is an inferior production. It’s just that after more than three decades on the hustings and a Tim Burton movie adaptation, the grisly story of a murderous barber who makes meat pies out of his victims, has lost some of its ability to shock.
This isn’t the stripped down version of ‘‘Sweeney Todd” that director John Doyle made famous by having his actors double as musicians several years back, but this 2010 production does flirt with minimalism in its spare musical accompaniment and set design.
James Kronzer’s effective set — stained swatches of fabric over scaffolding that suggests dirty, decaying tenements, a few box-like cinder-black rooms — is like something out of a Samuel Beckett play.
The only addition to the bleak landscape is a makeshift wooden barber’s chair (replaced by a collapsible version rigged to a trap door when business booms) and a giant meat grinder that oddly, given a lack of de-boning, is silent as it churns its contents.
‘‘Sweeney Todd” has always seemed a theatrical hybrid; half musical and half opera. With his verbose lyrics, challenging melodies and overlapping vocal lines, Sondheim is always challenging to sing, but ‘‘Sweeney Todd” with its extended fortissimos requires extra lung power. Not all of the cast is up to the task.
Sherri Edelin as Mrs. Lovett, the proprietor of the pie shop, is the star of the show. Not only is her singing on the mark, she gets the exuberance of the character and the lower-class London accent just right.
Venerable Washington stage actor Edward Gero is a mite stiff and somnambulant as Sweeney, looking as if he might have wandered onto the stage from the set of ‘‘Young Frankenstein.” But it’s a valid interpretation, seeing as how Sweeney, the former Benjamin Barker, has only recently emerged, no doubt numbed, from the bowels of prison. And as Sweeney dispatches his victims, the character grows more animated, both physically and emotionally.
A highlight of ‘‘Sweeney Todd” is Gero and Edelin’s duet on ‘‘A Little Priest,” where they hatch the scheme that fortifies Mrs. Lovett’s pies with extra protein. The conversational banter between the two as they offer up and reject the gastronomical merits of various professions is exquisite word play the two leads handle beautifully.
Chris Van Cleave is suitably pompous as Judge Turpin. He possesses a melodious baritone voice that blends well with Gero’s bass, especially in ‘‘Pretty Women,” where the two longingly extol the virtues of womanhood, one as protector and the other as exploiter.
Unfortunately, the sound in parts of the production can sometimes be muddy, particularly in the choral sections.
If you’ve only seen the movie – the Burton vehicle, not the stage film starring original cast members George Hearn and Angela Lansbury — you missed out on good chunks of the music, which were excised in favor of gothic gore. Do yourself a favor and see Signature’s ‘‘Sweeney Todd,” which lovingly caresses the songs in this American classic.
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