The Anaheim Hills troupe is taking a whack at one of Stephen Sondheim’s darkest, most singular, and most acclaimed shows.
By Eric Marchese
Many might believe that the character of Sweeney Todd was created by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler for their 1979 musical.
They’d be wrong.
The murderous barber and his now-famous story originated in 1846 and was, in short order, adapted from literature to the stage. In both forms, the tale of murder, mayhem, and revenge was wildly popular throughout the Victorian age.
The 20th century brought a British film version (1936) and Christopher Bond’s non-musical for the stage (1970), the latter forming the basis for the Sondheim-Wheeler work.
The incredibly famed, widely acclaimed show is the summer musical on Chance Theater’s schedule. So what can the Anaheim Hills troupe bring to a show known to countless devotees of musical theatre and theatre fans of every stripe?
Director James McHale said he and his team are bringing “a lot of theatrical movement and physicality to the piece, and some visceral and metaphorical imagery that I haven’t seen in other productions of ‘Sweeney’ before.”
“One of my goals has been to externalize some of the internal life of the show – the madness, for example – through heightened images and movement, and I’m really excited with what we as a team, including our amazing choreographer, Mo Goodfellow, bring to the show.”
McHale said audiences can also expect “some unique design choices,” including “some scenic choices I haven’t seen before” and “projections being used throughout the entire show – something almost never done” with “Sweeney.”
Multiple Parts ‘All Thrilling and Exciting’
The show, as McHale describes it, is “part Jacobean tragedy, part horror, part dark comedy, part operetta, and all parts thrilling and exciting. It’s a musical that has constantly caused me to have a visceral reaction every time I’ve seen it or listened to the score. It’s one of my all-time favorite scores.”
This is McHale’s first time directing a Sondheim musical, and he’s long been enthralled by “Sweeney Todd.”
“Since first listening to the soundtrack in my early college days, when it quite literally caused chills to run down my skin, I’ve wanted to work on this show. Now, many years later, this haunting and powerful story and score continue to elicit the same response, and I’m thrilled to help tell a tale that feels as timely as ever.”
The director characterizes the show from a technical standpoint as “this huge musical structure. Over 80 percent is either sung or underscored, and it’s this huge machine of music pieces all serving the larger piece, and the score is absolutely exhaustive in its approach. It’s full of melodies both hauntingly beautiful and nightmarish.”
Unlike McHale, Lex Leigh has worked on numerous Sondheim shows, having music directed “Into the Woods,” “Company,” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and, as assistant music director, “West Side Story.”
The music director of the production characterizes “Sweeney” as “one of the most complicated of Sondheim’s musicals. It has very complex harmonies and intricate timings. There are times when you have two actors singing in different time signatures or pulses that don’t line up at all. They are often singing things that don’t sound right when one or two people are singing, but mostly make sense when everyone is singing and the accompaniment is playing.”
At Chance, most of the score, Leigh relates, is being performed live: “I will be playing piano live for the entire show – not onstage, but perched up in the stage manager loft behind the audience, and not stick-conducting, but giving cues from the piano.” He said he’s also using prerecorded tracks that “come in at certain points in the show to support the emotions that are being portrayed on stage,” and that “one of our biggest components on this show is where and how to add in the supplemental tracks to best support the action on stage.”
Immersed in Complex Challenges
McHale and Leigh enumerated the lengthy list of challenges facing anyone who tackles “Sweeney Todd.” McHale says that “at 2-1/2 hours long, there’s a lot to rehearse – and it has such delicious but difficult music, such rich text, unique characters, comedy, tragedy, violence, and calls for some big theatrical moments. It’s a challenge to work on everything you want with a limited amount of rehearsal time.”
Leigh says the show “has the most dissonance and polyrhythms” of any Sondheim, and these “give the show, for lack of a better term, a sense of controlled chaos. There are definitely parts that resemble ‘Into the Woods,’ but everything in ‘Sweeney Todd’ is dialed up. The score very much resembles the madness of the characters you see on stage.”
McHale said that “getting to collaborate with an incredible cast, design team, and production team on a show this epic and making some hopefully fresh, bold choices, is not only enjoyable, but thrilling.”
That “incredible” cast stars Winston Peacock as the infamous Sweeney and longtime Chance resident artist Jocelyn A. Brown as his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett. Naya Ramsey-Clarke and Dylan August are Johanna Barker and Anthony Hope, Justin Ryan portrays the villainous Judge Turpin, Adam Leiva is young Tobias, Abel Miramontes is Beadle Bamford, Emmanuel Madera is Pirelli, and Laura M. Hathaway is the mysterious but pivotal character known only as Beggar Woman.
Joining McHale, Leigh, and Goodfellow on the production and design team are scenic designers Fred Kinney and Mio Okada, costume designer Gwen Sloan, lighting designer Jacqueline Malenke, sound designer Lia Weed, projection designer Nick Santiago, dramaturg Sophie Cripe, dialect coach Glenda Morgan Brown, props director Bebe Herrera, sound engineer James Markoski, Fight Director Martin Noyes and intimacy director Shinshin Yuder Tsai.
McHale encapsulates “Sweeney Todd” as covering a multitude of themes and subjects. “It’s about obsession and revenge, the disparity between poverty and wealth, mental health and madness, and a cautionary tale about what we are capable of, and of how we can lose our humanity by normalizing terrible things.”
“It's not very often you get to direct something in theatre that is part horror, that is genuinely scary, and that's also really emotionally engaging, and full of humor. As the wealth gap year after year continues to grow, as homelessness and the mental health crisis continue to be mostly ignored, and as charismatic figures appear obsessed with revenge, this cautionary story seems all the more relevant.”
Eric Marchese has written about numerous subjects for more than 39 years as a freelance and staff journalist at a wide variety of publications, but is best known as a critic, feature writer, and news reporter covering theatre and the arts throughout Orange County and beyond.
‘Sweeney Todd’
Chance Theater
Bette Aitken Theater Arts Center
5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim
July 12 - August 11, 2024
888-455-4212, www.ChanceTheater.com
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