The more he bleeds the more he lives…he never forgets and he never forgives…not Sweeney… not Sweeney Todd…and you do not wish to be on his hit list, I assure you. Rogue Swan Theatre Company, celebrating their ten-year anniversary, has gone all out— not just the spacious stage and auditorium of Havre de Grace’s STAR Centre— but they’re producing Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on said STAR Centre’s mainstage and this beast of a Sondheim musical is waiting with glistening razor edge and an unusually unique Rogue Swan hallmark stamped across its existence. C0-directed by Lilli Burril-Gordon and Katie Gordon, with Musical Direction (a combined effort on vocals from Breonna Lewis & Rob Tucker as well as Orchestra Conductor Jarrett Rettman), this dark and gory tale of tragedy is an excellent addition to the Spooky-Season docket in Havre de Grace and for being the company’s first full-length, main-stage licensed musical production, it was an impressive endeavor with solid talent and pleasing aesthetics well in place.
Sondheim is a musical beast; anyone in the musical theatre industry who has ever attempted to do a Sondheim show will tell you that. Jarrett Rettman’s 22-person orchestra (Jamie Kim, Megan Rupp, Jakob Neville, Katrina Kleinmann, Alicia Mitsock on reeds, Tucker Moore, Jeffrey Morris, Jim Shrake on trombones, Antony Nelson & David Russell on trumpets, Jeff Baker on French horn, Jason Bock on organ, Gabriel Fazzino, Rachel Daudelin, Hannah Potts on violins, Will Conway & Heather Spotts on violas, Jillian Masters on cello, Josh Hutchinson on bass, Jeremy Hicks-Kachik on harp, Joe Pipki & Jason Bock on percussion) helps successfully execute these daunting and complex musical numbers. For those familiar with Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd score, there are some noticeable tempo shifts, where a few of the songs seem to move along at a slower rate than written or previously played— namely “A Little Priest”, “Worst Pies in London”, and “By The Sea”— but as other numbers like “God! That’s Good!” clips along at its frenetically chaotic pace, it’s unclear if this was a tempo adjustment made for an intentional purpose or not. Tempo peculiarities aside, it’s a glorious thing to ‘see’ (because they are somewhat masked and hidden behind upright wooden slats and structures that comprise the set) this full-sized orchestra on stage and hear them flushing through the intricate Sondheim score in live-time. Rettman does a fine job of conducting them, keeping them on beat and in line with the singing performers on the stage, even if there are some curiously questionable tempo choices made throughout.
The show’s overall pacing is the other main hiccup for this production and if one had to hazard a guess it simply comes from a lack of experience in staging a full-length, licensed musical that has a written, particular order of pacing and flow. Sweeney Todd is an exceptionally tricky score and libretto to execute, particularly with the innumerable ensemble-ballad moments and this was where several of the pacing hangups came into play. Presetting the ensemble and using light cues to bring them into focus rather than waiting for them to come on to sing their songs is a way to tighten the pacing; the same can be said for other moments with principal performers but again; with the talented voices they have in their performing troupe and ensemble and the dedication to character work, you can almost overlook some of these more sluggish moments on stage, chalking it up to a new lesson to be learned. And the entirety of the performing corps as well as the orchestra have a tremendous and impressive sound to them. (Microphones aside…and there were some hiccups with those as well, but it’s few and far between anywhere in the city of Havre de Grace and all of their various performance venues for theatres where microphones and sound balance are not some kind of issue.)
Vocal Directors Breonna Lewis and Rob Tucker have done a superb job of carefully crafting those intrinsically maddening harmonies and ‘race-round’ sections where you have various parts singing overtop one another. You get clear, consistent sounds, well-balanced tones, clean, well-maintained pitches from all of the principal characters and the same quality resonating out of the ensemble during this vocal voyage that is Sweeney Todd. It’s a dizzying cacophony at times, but never one that sounds unpleasant, which is an impressive feat for any Sondheim production.
The show’s aesthetic is a unique amalgamation of something that toes the line between a Tim Burton revival gone gothic Disney and a Vaudeville nightmare flirting with Jack the Ripper’s London; it’s wondrous strange, deliciously awkward, and somewhat of a circus-spectacle when it comes to drinking in all the atmospheric components. Scenic Designer & Blood Expert (because what’s Sweeney Todd without blood?) Jimmyo Burril has crafted an intrinsically fascinating concept onto the stage which is both functional, fun to look at, and fills the sweeping cavern of the mainstage play are quite impressively. Burril’s most impressive pieces are the two dueling riser platforms that serve as Judge Turpin’s house for Johanna’s cage and the upstairs Tonsorial Parlor overtop Mrs. Lovette’s Pie shop. The sight lines for these two structures are cleverly crafted and you never lose sight of what’s happening when scenes are playing out on these upper decks. Enhancing Burril’s scenery (and it’s worth mentioning that the paint-job on the bakehouse oven has that authentic hot-iron look to it, making it a close second contender for ‘best set piece’ amongst Burril’s collection) is the illuminating work of Lighting Designer Bevin Gorin. There’s a lot of splashy magenta hues and cues being thrown about, which would seem really odd for an ordinary production of Sweeney Todd but seems to somehow fit with exacting perfection for this particular production. Gorin also makes use of that iconic ‘Disney-evil-lime-villain’ green lighting at appropriate moments throughout the performance, which enhances that curiously confusing “Is this a Disney-Tim-Burton approach or something much more sinister?” concept all the more.
Costume Designer Dane Hutchinson furthers that questioning notion of “what exactly are we watching and where exactly is this?” And not in a bad way, but in a ‘put-your-brain-into-overdrive-with-piqued-interest’ sort of way. There’s hints of Victorian era costuming. There’s splashes of racy color. There’s also a series of costume choices that create that unsettling ‘Disney-gone-to-the-dark-side’ vibe— particularly when all the principals arrive as one at the very end of the opening “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” with Johanna looking like a rogue-stricken Princess Elsa and the titular character looking like a cross between a high-strung Disney Villain and a shadow-man. The makeup on the cast, as a whole, creates a ghoulish effect and it begs the question— are these dead players reanimated? Are these shades of the past doomed to retell this story over and over again? It’s a curious concept for sure, one that needles at the brain as you’re trying to absorb it all.
Directors Lilli Burril-Gordon and Katie Gordon have championed some marvelously bizarre characters into the skeletal frame that Sondheim has set down for the principals. And you see their dynamic interplay throughout the production. Burril-Gordon & Gordon let some of these more exotically unexpected character pop out in little glimpses throughout the performance, making it a truly one-of-a-kind experience for anyone in attendance. It’s most noticeable with Sweeney and Lovette, but also in smaller supporting characters like The Beadle (Nate Gordon) who soodles with a swagger and a seedy sound in his vocal affectation that gives him an impressive command of his stage presence, but also creates moments of awkward hilarity with this larger-than-life caricature starts piping up in falsetto for “Parlor Songs.”
‘The Company’ (as they are listed though the rest of the musical theatre world might refer to them as ‘ensemble’) includes over a dozen individuals— Allie Beerman, Jasper Burril, Matt Cannon, Arianna Constantini, Caitlyn Shaffstall, April Burril, Lisa Geiger, Melissa Fazzino, Michael Maistros, Ron Furrow, Emma Stiner, Ryan Kaczmarczyk, Andrew Wentsel, Cat Wentsel— who deliver hearty sounds when singing through these tricky Sondheim numbers. When a bunch of them get turned into lunatics for the series at Fogg’s Asylum (feature Leonard Gilbert as the wretched Jonas Fogg), watching a half dozen or more of these performers twitch, shudder, and jerk about on the stage is just wild. Especially once the break from the confines of the asylum; half of them look like they’re hooked up to live wires and are being actively electrocuted. Pop outs from ‘The Company’ also include Ryan Kaczmarczyk as The Bird Seller, who has a very simple yet very captivating exchange with Johanna and Anthony, and Lisa Geiger, who plays a ‘ghost of sorts’ in a flashback scene during “Poor Thing” dancing around delicately up above the pie shop and then down on the main floor as Mrs. Lovette recounts a dark and ‘not nice’ tale from the past.
With a solid handle on both of his accents, Caleb Gordon is sharply smart in the role of Adolfo Pirelli. In that flashy purple suit and fabulous hair (that clearly has never touched a bottle of Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir because it’s so bouncy and fabulous all on its own!), Gordon brings panache to the table in this short-lived bit-part and his accents are extraordinarily consistent and impressively thick whilst still being audible and understandable. The menacing threat to the titular character is one of his more impressive moments, tailed closely by the way his eyes transfix on the razor blades the moment they appear in the square just before “The Contest.”
For this particular production, the nefarious Judge Turpin (Brian Ruff) seems to have less to do on stage than in more traditional productions (the show is often licensed with the option to purchase the additional number “Mea Culpa” but that did not appear in this performance) and Ruff’s portrayal of the Judge seems to be somewhat toned done, which is interesting as it almost puts the weight of villainy more heartily on The Beadle (the aforementioned Nate Gordon) and to a lesser but equally important extent, onto Sweeney Todd. Ruff has a solid voice for his moments in song and when he’s humming-babumming through “Pretty Women” with Sweeney it’s most amusing.
Of solid voice and delightful stage presence, Amy Tucker tackles the Beggar Woman with great fortitude, delivering a crass and saucy hobo-persona one moment and a tragically pitiable, deeply disturbed unwell woman the next. Tucker’s ability to balance these two characters inside one entity is impressive, not to mention the fact that her vocal prowess could probably blast a hole straight up through the ceiling of the meat pie shop into the tonsorial parlor. Mostly she’s decrying for “Alms” but she gets her moment most certainly when she’s singing in the final mélange of music in the last ~20 minutes of the show.
Where there’s Sondheim, there’s ingenues. Sweeney Todd is no exception, though this Rogue Swan Theatre Company presentation of Anthony (Jesse Hutchinson) and Johanna (Marion Jackson) is a little less gooey-dopey-ding-dong-meet-cute-lovers and a little more ‘side-quest-characters-with-hints-of-autonomy-and-agency’ particularly for Jackson’s Johanna. Both have songbird voices well suited for their respective vocal roles, particularly when Jackson is singing her way through “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” though there is something much more sinister and almost haunting about the way she sings this song; Jackson brings an awareness to her character’s own desperate situation, rather than simply singing like a songbird warbling away to showcase her high soprano range. Their chemistry feels earnest, especially during “Kiss Me” and when they reunite at Fogg’s Asylum. Hutchinson, who does indeed deliver a bright tenor sound to Antony, sings beautifully and with a deep sense of yearning; this is heard readily all throughout the various iterations of “Johanna” and in his opening bid with “No Place Like London.” The slight hiccup to Hutchinson’s performance is that when he’s singing you get this glorious, grounded-in-the-era sounding Anthony but when he’s exchanging dialogue there is a more modern, present-day vibe to his patois and cadence. An odd choice and a noticeable one, though it doesn’t really dramatically disrupt the story.
Quirky, full of gusto, and looking creepier than your average Tobias Ragg, Ethan Howard lets the character slip from this innocent pawn directly into the depths of madness by the time Toby reaches the end of the show. With a range that is mature beyond its years, this edgier ‘teen of the streets’ attitude that Howard brings to the character is unusual but not unpleasant. And his song to Mrs. Lovette, “Nothing’s Going To Harm You” is very endearing if ominous and foreboding. Howard does a sensational job of rallying the ensemble (and by proxy the audience) to attention both for “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” and “God! That’s Good!”
Never was there an odder set of delirious ducks tackling Lovette and Todd than with Katie Gordon and James Watkins. These two read like an old Vaudeville married couple and it puts a fascinating if not fully humorous spin on the relationship dynamic between the pair. This is most readily witnessed during “By The Sea” where you get a great deal of physical comedy etched into the number and it’s difficult to tell what’s more hysterical— Gordon flinging herself all over him and all but falling off that loveseat or Watkins trying desperately to escape her antics whilst not offending her and also serving up so much face that the people down the street at The Opera House can see his vivacious facial expressions. It’s. Wild. You get this dynamic, though to somewhat lesser of a degree, in “A Little Priest” and while their humors are definitely about them in that number, the somewhat languid pacing of that song detracts from some of the more comedic things they’re attempting to execute at the end of act one. Gordon is doing some vocal gymnastics and acrobatics all throughout the performance (it almost reads like a decision couldn’t be made as to which range this Lovette would be heard in so Gordon said, ‘screw it, let’s do all of them!’) but its an impressive display of her range and capabilities all the same. You get a real sense of her emotional side when she’s singing back at Toby during “Nothing’s Going to Harm You” too.
Watkins and his portrayal of Sweeney Todd defies description. It’s unhinged in places where one might not expect it to be unhinged, it’s buffoonish and deeply amusing in places you wouldn’t expect there to be good cause to chuckle, and it’s also deeply unsettling in places— half because of Watkins stage presence, half because of his makeup plot and the way light is hitting him, and half because of the way he lets emotions dominate the character. (Yes, that’s one whole plus a half but Watkins is really making this Sweeney more than just a whole thing on stage; again— very difficult to describe accurately in a way that does his performance justice.) You get gutter-roared vocals for “Epiphany” which is something everyone expects, if not demands, from that song but there’s also something uneasily feral about Watkins in that number; it’s fascinating. And the raw Vesuvian eruption of emotions that break his veneer by the show’s conclusion are beyond intense. It’s a very different, very visceral Sweeney, unique and exquisitely charming in a comically off-balanced-not-quite-of-this-world fashion. And his vocal range is well-suited for all of Sweeney’s song to boot.
It is most certainly a unique experience, one that you won’t ever get from Sweeney Todd outside of these four performances as presently offered by Rogue Swan. Definitely worth investigating and a shout of praise and support for their first full-length, main-stage, licensed musical endeavor.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes with one intermission
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Rogue Swan Theatre Company production, plays September 27th 2024 through October 5th 2024 at The STAR Centre of Havre de Grace— 700 Congress Avenue in Havre de Grace, MD. Tickets are available at the door or in advance online.
To read the Round-Robin interview with various members of the Rogue Swan Cast & Creative Team for Sweeney Todd, click here.
