By Harry Haun
07 Nov 2005

Stephen Sondheim; Patti LuPone; Manoel Felciano & Nancy Anderson; Michael Cerveris; Benjamin Magnuson; Lauren Molina; Mark Jacoby; Alexander Gemignani.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

Hal Prince's mighty landmark production of Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in 1979 ended not with a bang but with a violent door-slam that has reverberated in the collective consciousness of musical-theatre buffs ever since.

This London-born reincarnation—"directed and designed by John Doyle," reads the Playbill title page—begins and ends with such a door-slam, taking place in the shattered psyche of Tobias, the slow-witted waif who slammed the door on Mrs. Lovett's dubious good-eats factory in the first place. In this retelling, the innocent Tobias has become understandably unhinged by the calamitous events and been committed to a madhouse to over-attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, going over it again and again in perpetual replay.

Taking a classic story from a different perspective is not unlike looking in the wrong end of the telescope (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, for handy example), and that's the vision Doyle boldly bulldozed onto Broadway. "I never thought of it as courageous," he confessed after the fact, at the elaborate after-party held at The Copacabana where waiters would rush up to the somewhat shaken first-nighters with trays of . . . meat pies!

"I was just thinking I was doing what I do, you know what I mean? I was trying to tell the story in an honest way, and it's wonderful to see it in this kind of glitzy circumstances."

Doyle was a bit dazed by his Broadway debut, but otherwise unfazed by the hard work he put into making it happen. "That's how I always work. You've just gotta believe in what you do. The actors were fantastic. They really joined me, and we had a wonderful time."

This ten-member cast functioned like the population of Rhode Island, singing and acting and playing a whole spectrum of musical instruments—Patti LuPone, the unexpected percussionist tripling on tuba and triangle, to give you an idea—and, if you had done a slow pan of the opening-night audience, you would spot a lot of radiant elderly faces who are at last seeing a payback for all those years of music lessons they'd paid for in the past. So successful was this cast-as-orchestra go-around for Doyle that he intends to go back for seconds on Sondheim, having won Stephen's approving nod for a production of Company at the Cincinnati Playhouse. (Doyle has applied the technique on many shows in his native UK.) Casting director Bernard Telsey and music coordinator John Miller will again put their heads together to come up with another multitasking miracle.

"This was really hard," Telsey readily allowed, "but what was great was it started with people coming in and just playing their instruments and doing what they do best and seeing how they fit. John Miller's amazing. He knows what he wants, and he's willing to work with what people have. He's pretty inspiring. I'm looking forward to a repeat."

David Loud, who has the unusual billing of "Resident Music Supervisor," was also a key player in creating the Sweeniest sounds, but "This is the hardest thing I've ever been involved with. Omigod! Sarah Travis did the music supervision and orchestrations. The director would say to her, `Well, you can't have him here because he has to move the ladder at this point,' so she had to sorta orchestrate around that. Those were challenges, but there's something so honest and raw about seeing them perform the music and act it."

In addition to the parts they play, the Playbill lists the instruments they play. The Tobias of the evening, Manoel Felciano, swings from violin to clarinet to keyboard, and professed not to be confused by it all. "It's actually not difficult because of the way this piece has been directed," he said. "When you're playing an instrument, you are actively part of it—it is an acting decision, an acting moment. There are lines that I play on the violin that could be lines of dialogue. If I play the beggar woman's theme, it's almost like my character is commenting on the scene. In `Not While I'm Around,' with Patti, there is a moment when the music is really saying, `He's going to harm you.' It's sort of eerie."

This is not Felciano's first encounter with The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. "I've played it before—it was the second musical I ever experienced in my life, and it was in college. Ironically, I played the violin in the pit for it. Now, I'm on stage, still playing the violin."

He enjoys the fact that this show all takes place inside his character's disarrayed head. "It's an enormous benefit to me as an actor—and a privilege—because I get to watch all the action. And when you have people like Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris doing the work for you, it's a pleasurable thing to witness. It's an education, to be honest about it."

Cerveris, who had a relatively small body count in his last Sondheim (Assassins) but still enough to collect a Tony for his John Wilkes Booth, startled some first-nighters with the gravitas and darkness that he brought to Sweeney. "You know what it is?" he reflected later. "You gotta have it to stand up to Patti. If you're going to play with Patti LuPone, you gotta bring the big guns." Their chemistry is palpable. "I think this is the fourth show and the fifth production we've done together. We so love working with each other."

In one of their scenes on opening night, half of Cerveris' tie was lying over his shoulder, and LuPone sweetly reached over and made the proper adjustment—a light and loving gesture that speaks volumes for how well they play together. "She looks after me," he admitted.

Although he more than makes up for it in the heavy-duty acting department, he was almost apologetic about his lightweight instrumental antics (basically, only the guitar). "I didn't have as much musical responsibility as everybody else, but it's all a part of the seamless whole in John's way of working. Everything is a part of everything else, so playing a bunch of instruments is not a chore. It's, like, `What can I get to do next?'"

This is, by actual count, LuPone's fourth Mrs. Lovett. She previously played it at Avery Fisher Hall, Ravina and with the San Francisco Symphony. Another time, another Lovett, she said. "That was my Victorian. This is my modern day. I count it my second interpretation. I had a different director so everything's different. The whole thing is different."

Indeed, it's a Patti LuPone you have not seen before, padded just short of the Lou Jacobs point and poured into tattered fishnet stockings and blowzy black sequins. She also sports a Louise Brooks black wig, which wigmaker extraordinaire Paul Huntley said was Doyle's idea. "He felt Mrs. Lovett was slightly over-the-top and dressed her too young."

Four Broadway bows are marked in this edition Sweeney Todd, including the actors who play the two young lovers, Benjamin Magnuson and Lauren Molina. Both make beautiful music together—and on the same instrument, too: the cello. "It couldn't have been more accurately directed, with Anthony and Johanna both playng the cello," said Molina. "I just adore that. The sound of the cello makes you weep. It's one of those instruments that get inside of you and just sings. I love how it creates the character. As far as playing Johanna, the cello sounds so much like the human voice, and it's such a poetic, beautiful instrument. But I never imagined it would be this integral in my life right now." Continued...

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