Theatre in Review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Barrow Street Theatre)

	Duncan Smith, Jeremy Secomb. Photo: Joan Marcus

In this new production of the classic musical, you come for the pies and stay for the horror. Rachel Edwards, of the London theatre company Tooting Arts Club, had the notion of producing Sweeney Todd -- the grisliest musical ever written about food preparation -- in a local pie shop. The result was so acclaimed that it transferred to Shaftesbury Avenue. Now, the interior of the Barrow Street Theatre has been turned into a simulacrum of Harrington's Pie & Mash, which has occupied the same location in Tooting since 1908. The upper walls are a dismaying yellow, except where white plaster has been applied to cracks; below are green tiles. Audiences, seated at long tables, tuck into plates of pie (beef, chicken, or vegetable). This setting is not really evocative of Victorian London, the setting of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's musical thriller; at the performance I attended, before the show began, we heard Whitney Houston on the radio. Then again, it is the kind of classic London institution that seems to exist outside of time.

And indeed, this seedy, shabby interior proves to be a nearly ideal setting for the ghastly, unapologetically melodramatic, events that unfold over the next two hours and forty-five minutes. I've seen Sweeney Todd in its spectacular original production, the downsized York Theatre Company revival (amusingly dubbed "Teeny Todd"), and the intimately scaled John Doyle revival (in which the actors doubled as musicians). But I still wasn't prepared for the impact it would have in a small, crowded room, with cast members often standing inches away (sometimes on the table). In this environment, and with such a gifted, committed company, the musical's rattling terrors and jet-black comedy are felt with a power that, for me, recalls the electrifying effect of the original production, still one of the top five experiences I've had in four decades of theatregoing.

Sweeney Todd in a pie shop, complete with your choice of pie? A gimmick, you say? Victorian dinner theatre? You'll change your tune when that shrill factory whistle sears the air and you are confronted with the eight-member company, banging pieces of cutlery together adding a sinister drumbeat to the driving opening number. Everything in Bill Buckhurst's production is infused with imagination. Candles are distributed around the room, calling up the chiaroscuro atmosphere of vintage gaslit melodramas. Todd's rival, the faux Italian barber, Pirelli, is first revealed as a silhouette behind a white sheet. As Todd sharpens his razor in preparation for his duel with Pirelli, his movements are accompanied by the sound metal scraping a washboard, a nerve-wracking adumbration of the slaughter to come. When Todd lures a victim to his tonsorial doom, he leads the poor fellow up a flight of stairs and through an open door; the whistle is heard, there is a blast of blood-red light, and Todd returns carrying a sheet stained with blood.

Buckhurst makes judicious use of audience interaction without ever undermining the show's savage viewpoint, its cruel and sinister jokes. As Tobias Ragg, the boy pitchman, tries to sell Pirelli's miracle hair growth elixir to a skeptical crowd, I and a few other similarly bald patrons had our heads splashed with the product in question. The sinister, pathetic Beggar Woman briefly importunes a male in the audience and later offers dark warnings from the theatre's tiny balcony. Once or twice, Todd pushes his way onto a bench filled with viewers, at least once howling in rage.

This last gesture is the riskiest, but it works, thanks to Jeremy Secomb's towering performance. His hair slicked back, his face taut, his eyes dark with anger, he is a deeply unsettling presence, a death's head fixing its basilisk stare on a fallen world. (As the lyrics state, Todd is given to "hearing the music that nobody hears.") His mind -- no, his entire being -- is focused on revenge, and he never makes an unnecessary move. Secomb's voice, which would be impressive in a large Broadway house, reverberates here with shattering power, each word of the lyrics carefully considered. He also does something that, in my experience, is unique: In the middle of "Epiphany," sung after Judge Turpin gets away and Todd unleashes his rage on the world ("They all deserve to die!"), he stops and takes a long pause, as if he is considering what he is singing and deciding that, yes, he is right and the time has come for unbridled vengeance against the world; a simple gesture reframes a number I thought I knew so well.

Secomb has a brilliant partner in Siobhán McCarthy, whose Mrs. Lovett is a cheerful, popeyed rag doll, her bustling good nature and eminently practical manner masking a soul almost as monstrous as Todd's. She gets every bit of knockabout farce out of "Worst Pies in London," arguably the most difficult introductory number in musical theatre, stomping on bugs and spreading susipicion that the competing bakeshop down the street has been serving up cat meat. A little later, she clutches Todd from behind, admitting her long-burning love for him -- while he remains fixated on his razor. ("At last, my right arm is complete again!") She glides through "Wait," one of the score's most beautiful melodies, advising Todd that revenge requires patience. And she and Secomb partner brilliantly in "A Little Priest," that satanic waltz, bubbling with wicked wordplay, in which Todd and Mrs. Lovett outline their unique supply-and-demand system, his victims providing the fillings for her pies. ("Try a little fop/Finest in the shop/And we've got shepherd's pie peppered/With actual shepherd on top!") I've seen many fine performances -- by some very heavy hitters -- in these roles, but Secomb and McCarthy are the first to rival Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury, who created them. I can't offer higher praise than that. (Starting April 11, the roles of Todd and Mrs. Lovett will be taken over by Norm Lewis and Carolee Carmello, big-voiced singers who are eminently qualified to blow the roof off the theatre.)

There are also strong contributions by Duncan Smith as the lustful, savagely hypocritical Judge Turpin, and Joseph Taylor, applying his illuminated smile and choirboy tenor to the role of Tobias, who gets dragged into Todd and Mrs. Lovett's operation. Also onboard are some familar Broadway faces. As Johanna, Todd's long-lost daughter, and Anthony, the sailor who wants to rescue her from Judge Turpin's clutches, Matt Doyle and Alex Finke offer sincere, beautifully sung performances without the touch of caricature that sometimes adheres to these roles. Betsy Morgan is creepy as the Beggar Woman and, in what may be a first, applies her lovely soprano to the role of Pirelli, whose blackmailing ways make him Todd's first victim. Brad Oscar is smug, self-satisfied, and golden-voiced as Beadle Bamford, Turpin's vicious second-in-command.

Simon Kenny is responsible for both the recreation of Harrington's Pie & Mash and the costumes, which retain a raffish air suitable to the occasion. Amy Mae's lighting is fiendishly clever, with instruments hidden in the oddest places, revealing themselves as necesary. Matt Stine's sound design includes some eerie reverb effects for scenes set in the shop's basement, as well as the clank of the basement door shutting tight, an effect packed with sinister intimations.

And then there is the show itself, indisputably, to my mind, Sondheim's masterpiece, wedding the macabre wit of the lyrics to music filled with an unappeasable longing. Never mind the subject matter, this is his most romantic score, song after song filled with yearning -- for lost love, the restoration of a lost past, or sheer, simple revenge. Wheeler's book is a cunning piece of construction, a series of chess moves designed to bring all the characters together for a climax marked by a series of twists that lay bare the futility of Todd's quest. Even in the drastically reduced arrangements, for three musicians, by Benjamin Cox, the beauty of Sondheim's music comes through loud and clear.

With the assistance of the choreographer, Georgina Lamb, Buckhurst places us in the middle of this whirl of events -- young lovers, separated by circumstance, dreaming of their reunion, or a razor coming so close to an intended victim's neck that you hold your breath in suspense. The staging of the second act is a tad less assured, if only because events move fast across several locations, which are challenging to depict on the production's single set. But this is the tiniest of quibbles. So much immersive theatre seems like a desperate reach for novelty; this production, in contrast, casts a masterwork in a sinister new light. It is worthy of Sondheim and Wheeler's brilliance; you can't do better than that. -- David Barbour