Well, this week has become a bit of Musical Theater Week here at W&C... there were a couple of posts about Andrew Lloyd Webber night on Idol and today we have slightly overdue post about seeing Sweeney Todd (the stage version) this past Friday night.
Going from Webber to Sondheim (well, actually it's the other way around), is an interesting contrast. Theater... now how can I put this ... "purists" will tell you Sondheim is the man when it comes to modern musical theater. Webber is more often than not dismissed as pedestrian, appealing wildly to the simple-minded masses with flash and bombast. So, in that way, ALW and Idol was a perfect marriage. Last night, I joked with Todd in that SAT Verbal "analogy" would be: ALW is to Musical Theater as American Idol is to... Television.
My take on ALW? I find that each musical contains at least one brilliant song, but generally have some issue with the entire work. But that's typically the case for 95% of the musicals I have seen, ALW or not. And I have seen a lot of them, I've updated my Musicals Seen Page... and Sweeney Todd is... ready for this... the 66th (different!) musical in my lifetime.
... and despite that number... shockingly enough, it was the 1st time I had seen a Stephen Sondheim musical... so I have to 'fess up to having just some very general familiarity/knowledge of his work (Is that the gay police that I hear knocking on my door to revoke my gay card?).
Sweeney Todd had me worried pretty much within the first minute (btw, never did see the Johnny Depp movie version)... it just seemed incredibly odd and I just wasn't getting it. And if I was thinking that, I knew I was in deep trouble with Todd. I don't know if this has always been the case... but I know in this most recent Sweeney incarnation on Broadway (and had been done with the recent revival of Sondheim's Company), the cast was also the orchestra. The cast is always on the stage (and a small one) and sometimes just appearing to randomly walk around. So it took a quite a bit of soaking it all in... and the story is not exactly My Fair Lady... with the psychopathic titular barber returning to London and ultimately partnering with Mrs. Lovett, a no less psychopathic baker who brainstorms a way to deal with an escalating body count, while giving a little extra zing to her meat-pie business.
While I offered to Todd and contemplated an intermission exit, ultimately I think we were glad we stuck with it. Granted it won't rank up there on our list of all-time faves, but it wasn't bad... and we did end up appreciate the staging and even the quite odd story. David Hess as Sweeney and Judy Kaye as Mrs. Lovett (pictured above) were quite good... though with Kaye, my initial reaction was... "Great! We're going to see Karen Walker (from Will & Grace) in a musical!?" Though the more I thought about it, the more I thought that that wouldn't have been such a bad thing... ha!
An interesting night of theater, that's for sure. And it proved to be an inspiration for one my dinners this past week... imagine Todd's surprise when I told Todd we were having "meat pie"! But since, I've gone on way too much already (wasn't anticipating that whole ALW digression), I'll just tease it for another post... so stay tuned!
You and I are in agreement on ALW. I find one chestnut of a song wrapped in boring filler.
And NEVER see Starlight Express in Vegas. Snooze fest!
Call me dense, but I didn't get the Karen Walker reference. Megan Mullally was Karen Walker I thought.
Posted by: Scott-O-Rama | Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 06:42 PM