{"id":26939,"date":"2015-11-11T09:01:57","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T17:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/to-serve-man-sweeney-todd-at-perseverance-theatre\/"},"modified":"2015-11-11T09:01:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T17:01:57","slug":"to-serve-man-sweeney-todd-at-perseverance-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/to-serve-man-sweeney-todd-at-perseverance-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"To Serve Man: “Sweeney Todd” at Perseverance Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe history of the world, my sweet, is who gets eaten and who gets to eat.\u201d <\/em>\u2013 Sweeney Todd<\/p>\n

Bon app\u00e9tit<\/em>, Juneau. But beware. The piquancy of Perseverance Theatre\u2019s rendition of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cSweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street\u201d definitely sneaks up on you. It\u2019s kind of like theatrical Sriracha.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not mince words, here. \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d isn\u2019t a particularly pleasant musical\u2014at least not in the traditional sense. Plot points include rape, incest, murder and cannibalism. The score, based upon a Catholic death mass, is complex, choppy and often purposefully dissonant, as if to keep the audience in a state of constant tension. And the lyrics echo with such lines as \u201cthere\u2019s a hole in the world like a great black pit, and it\u2019s filled with people who are filled with [ahem].\u201d This isn\u2019t \u201cI feel pretty and witty and gay\u201d Stephen Sondheim; it\u2019s \u201cwe all deserve to die\u201d Stephen Sondheim.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s a certain masochistic enjoyment to be found in the unpleasant, which, come to think of it, may be the whole point.<\/p>\n

Director Flordelino Lagundino serves up this penny-dreadful tale of gruesome revenge and grotesque desire simmering in a broth of perverse social injustice. Set in a less-than-savory neighborhood in 19th century London, \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d tells the story of a master barber unjustly convicted and shipped off to Australia by a wicked, lecherous judge who not only covets his wife, but also steals his baby daughter. The ex-con returns 15 years later as Sweeney Todd, seeking retribution by slashing the throats of his tonsorial customers, who are then disposed of via custom barber chair and processed into meat pies by opportunistic downstairs baker Mrs. Lovett. Talk about farm-to-table.<\/p>\n

\u201cSweeney Todd\u201d ranks as one of Sondheim\u2019s most-produced musicals. Given its combination of black humor and graphically violent subject matter, productions of \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d often veer off into spectacle, dripping with low-budget slasher-flick style special effects.<\/p>\n

Perseverance\u2019s production, however, is far more restrained in its theatrics. Here, Lagundino eschews the usual grisly splatter. Carnage is either implied or evoked through lighting; sets, designed by Deb O, share similar \u201csteampunk\u201d sparseness.<\/p>\n

This \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d tastes more like sardonic social commentary than live-action horror show. Without all the blood, the audience focuses on the razor. What\u2019s truly more frightening, the musical seems to ask, campy gore or the depths of human ruthlessness?<\/p>\n

Of course, without large set pieces and spurting jugulars\u2014even the song-and-dance numbers seem intentionally muted \u2014 the show relies heavily upon the strength of its performers.<\/p>\n

Perseverance actor-in-residence Enrique Bravo delivers a haunting turn as the Demon Barber. His eyes burn with monomaniacal hatred when he talks about murder; he performs the actual slashing with eerily casual abandon. Victoria Bundonis, who you may recognize from Showtime\u2019s \u201cNurse Jackie,\u201d gleams as Mrs. Lovett, the cannibal pie-woman. She is ghoulishly funny\u2014her character gets the biggest portion and choicest cuts of humor\u2014and raggedly erotic\u2026 like a Victorian-era \u201ccougar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond this gruesome twosome, Keith Patrick McCoy is thrillingly chilling as Judge Turpin (and his singing voice buttery and deep; I\u2019m jealous). In Leonid Grinberg\u2019s Anthony, star-crossed lover of Sweeney Todd\u2019s daughter, I noted hints of Tony from \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics. Jessica Skiba holds her own as Johanna, the daughter in question, as does Zebadiah Bodine as Tobias Bragg, Kelly Rossberg as the Beadle and Christina Apathy as the Beggar Woman, whose refrain, \u201ccity on fire,\u201d still haunts me nearly a week after opening night.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the ensemble plays a large role in \u201cSweeney Todd,\u201d acting as a classical Greek chorus (in addition to eventual pie filling). The entire cast opens the second act with perhaps the musical\u2019s most demanding number, \u201cGod, That\u2019s Good,\u201d in which the people of London\u2014specifically the underclass people of London\u2014become enamored of Mrs. Lovett\u2019s new menu offering. Obvious message: it\u2019s not only dog eat dog out there; it\u2019s people eat people.<\/p>\n

By no means am I calling \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d a perfect production. Some elements \u2014 such as the intrusion of objects like Casio keyboards and Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars into Victorian England\u2014seemed oddly anachronistic, as did the decision to include video art, which I found unnecessary and distracting\u2026 but then, I find most video art to be unnecessary and distracting. Still, that sort of thing runs counter to the show\u2019s otherwise pervasive minimalist aesthetic.<\/p>\n

And, of course, the gore is part of the fun. Like sprinkling sugar on grapefruit, dousing \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d in buckets of stage blood can actually sweeten a musical some may otherwise find too bitter to handle on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe history of the world, my sweet, is who gets eaten and who gets to eat.\u201d \u2013 Sweeney Todd Bon app\u00e9tit, Juneau. But beware. The piquancy of Perseverance Theatre\u2019s rendition of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cSweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street\u201d definitely sneaks up on you. It\u2019s kind of like theatrical Sriracha. Let\u2019s not mince […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":26940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26939"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}