Review: Sondheim and SWEENEY TODD Electrify Lyric Music Theater

Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with its complex through-composed score and dark ironies is an ambitious undertaking for any company, but South Portland's Lyric Music Theater rises to the challenge in an economical and electrifying performance that keeps the audience riveted to its seats.

Staging this musical, which is part ballad opera, part Brechtian drama, part Grand Guignol, part opera requiring chilling effects, can be a daunting task particularly for a small house with minimal physical resources. Yet, director and set designer Michael Donovan and his creative team, taking an inventive and spare approach, solve the technical demands of the show without sacrificing any of the drama. Deprived of a trap door, a mechanical barber's chair, or even the multiple levels the set suggests, Donovan's staging makes use of stylized movement, mime, and choreography to move the action. His pacing is taut and he keeps an uninterrupted and ever accelerating flow toward the catastrophic finale.

Musical Director Evan Cuddy on piano, conducts the seven other offstage musicians in a haunting account of Sondheim's brilliant score, with especially fine cello playing of Cameron Prescott, and he has coached the excellent singers of the cast with élan. Grace Fosler supplies the Victorian costumes and Alison Bogannan's wigs and makeup add the grotesque where needed. Don Smith's lighting with its dramatic shadows and lurid effects goes a long way in creating the ambiance, though occasionally the cross fades - necessary to the blocking - are slower or more uneven than might be desirable.

The cast shines with strong principals and ensemble alike. Zach Handlen brings a burly, brooding intensity of the title character, and he manages the balance between icy murderous routine and violent emotional eruption. His powerful baritone handles Sweeney's dramatic and lyric music with ease. (The only quibble is the absence of any British accent at all.) Amy Torrey is a dynamo of a Mrs. Lovett - note perfect in her cockney accent, crisp in her diction, brassy in her vocal delivery, and she captures the numerous facets of the role - from cheeky to opportunistic and amoral to maternal - with deft ease. Schuyler White uses his fine tenor admirably in Anthony's romantic music, while Rachel Henry lends her exquisite coloratura soprano and sweetly vulnerable, yet ditsy presence to Joanna.

Adam Gary Normand is an imposing Beadle, evoking all the unctuous pomposity of the character and adding his impressive tenor to the musical tapestry. Darrell Leighton plays Judge Turpin as a misguided, predatory, self-important man, though he steers away from the blatant lasciviousness others have brought to this role. Liz Kershenbaum makes a compelling the Beggar Woman, breezing in and out of the action with a wildness and vocal edge that are arresting. Casting Pirelli as a trouser role (rather than the satire of the Italian tenor or even castrato that Sondheim originally conceived) actually makes sense as a different kind of operatic parody and allows soprano Molly Harmon to sing the role as intended, with all the comic vocal embellishments. Sean Senior makes a brief incisive cameo as Jonas Fogg.

A standout in this excellent cast of principals is Tommy Waltz as Tobias Ragg. Giving an eerie, mesmeric performance of the Boy Fool, Waltz is by turns quirky, endearing, simple, vulnerable, and ultimately dangerously unhinged. The final few minutes of the drama belong to him alone and one could hear a pin drop as he delivered the chilling last monologue. The twelve-person ensemble is comprised of Lyric regulars, each limning an individual character and lending palpable energy to the whole.

Of the many incarnations of this Sondheim classic I have seen, there is always something spellbinding about a production done in an intimate space such as Lyric's, and the company is to be highly applauded for tackling and mastering this work!

Photos courtesy of Lyric Music Theater, Tommy Waltz Photography

Sweeney Todd runs from January 15- January 30, 2016 at Lyric Music Theater, Sawyer St., South Portland, ME 207-799-1421 www.lyricmusictheater.org

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