Sondheim musical slits throats, splits sides

Author: Grace Duggan

One of the highlights of the last weekend of Winter Term was the Music Department's production of "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street." The stellar ensemble sunk their teeth into Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics and, under the direction of Executive Director of the Middlebury Town Hall Theatre Doug Anderson, they developed an impressive and enjoyable interpretation of the unusual musical in less than a month.

"Sweeney Todd" tells the tragic story of a bitter, revenge-driven man named Sweeney Todd (Ezra Axelrod '08, in his first theatrical performance at the College) who returns to London after 15 years of wrongful imprisonment in the Australian penal colony known as Botany Bay. Upon his return, Todd hears from Mrs. Lovett (Judith Dry '09) that his beloved wife committed suicide not long after Judge Turpin (Bil Davison '08) - the same man who convicted him - raped her. This is only part of Todd's depressing return, as he next finds out that Turpin serves as his daughter Johanna's (Rhiannon Corby '11) ward. Consumed by the desire for revenge, Todd joins forces with the amorous and amoral Mrs. Lovett and returns to his previous profession as a barber, a fateful decision that leaves a steady stream of dead customers who subsequently wind up baked into Mrs. Lovett's pies.

The success of "Sweeney Todd" stemmed from the chemistry between Axelrod and Dry, as well as from the cohesion of the full ensemble. Excluding the anticlimactic death of her character, Dry held the entire concert hall captive with the energy she brought to crowd-pleasing numbers like "The Worst Pies in London" and "A Little Priest." The latter featured Mrs. Lovett and Todd gleefully dancing hand-in-hand and prancing in tandem as they extolled Mrs. Lovett's latest change to her pie recipes: the use of Todd's murder victims. In "God, That's Good" Mrs. Lovett achieves great success feeding unknowing patrons pies made of murder victims. Dry emerged all dolled up and in sharp contrast to the increasingly gaunt and miserable Todd, who proceeded to kill three men (James Tresner '09, Roberto Ellis '09, Kevin Thorsen '11) over the course of the song, each with a more comical death than the last. The ensemble visibly relished this number, hamming it up as ravenous customers and freezing mid-action several times in garish and hilarious poses.

Though the character of Todd embodies an energy easily distinguished from that of Mrs. Lovett, Axelrod demonstrated he was more than capable of matching Dry's sprightly stage presence. In "By the Sea," Todd's cool ambivalence was juxtaposed with Mrs. Lovett energetically imagining an idyllic life near the ocean. Much to the delight of the audience, Dry emerged from behind parasols held by female ensemble members wearing large sunglasses and a tiny yellow bathing suit. Axelrod balanced Todd's cold-blooded sadism with humanizing moments like mourning the death of the mysterious Beggar Woman (Martina Bonolis '10) and his palpable discomfort during "The Worst Pies in London" after meeting Mrs. Lovett. These points gave the audience glimpses of Benjamin Barker, the man Todd used to be. Axelrod's powerful voice formed the backbone of numbers like the solo "The Barber and His Wife" and "Pretty Women," sung with Davison. "Pretty Women" also featured Todd psyching the audience out in his attempts to kill Turpin, only to be interrupted by Anthony Hope (Max Kanter '10.5), a na've young man who falls for Todd's daughter. Rounding out the core actors were Teddy Crecelius '08 as Tobias and Noah Silverstein '11 in the role of The Beadle. Crecelius painted Todd and Lovett's unwitting accomplice as chipper and wonderfully innocent - a move that set up Tobias' horror upon learning the truth to come off as all the more unnerving at the end of the play.

Hope's budding romance with Johanna provided a sharp and decidedly less interesting contrast to the fairly one-sided relationship between Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Hope's tendency to put the innocent and virtuous Johanna on a pedestal was interpreted literally in her position at the top of a staircase when the audience meets her in "Green Finch and Linnet Bird." The character of Johanna quickly took a backseat to the Johannas imagined by males in the play, specifically Todd, Hope and Turpin. Davison's wrenching portrayal of Turpin's perverted love for his ward in "Johanna" - complete with brutal self-flagellation - served as a warped version of Hope's similar obsession with Todd's daughter.

A less obvious contributor to the success of the production was the ingenious setup of the stage. Large backdrops with angular shapes in black, grey and white created the image of a dirty, sooty London and the scaffolding and movable staircases dominating the stage provided the ensemble with a multi-level stage. Set Designer Alex Benepe '09, like many others involved in the production, expressed immense gratitude to Anderson for his input, support and energy.

"He worked just as hard as I did on the set," said Benepe. "It was his idea to use a scaffolding to begin with. He also designed the slide under the trapdoor and the creative uses of the stairs."

"He truly understands what the performing arts can mean for a community," added Crecelius. Given the recently formed partnership between the College and Middlebury's Town Hall Theater, one hopes that "Sweeney Todd" is only the beginning of a successful collaboration between the two.