Event Article

The story of Sweeney Todd is not your typical period-piece musical about an exiled entrepreneur.

It is instead a musical with an off-color, macabre story line of a vengeful widower, looking to wreak 'havoc on a town, and society at large by killing them, and then partnering with fellow business owner and love interest to feed the corpses to unsuspecting patrons.

"Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is an eight-time Tony award winning musical by Hugh Wheeler with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Fullerton College premiered the show, directed by Gary Krinke, Thursday and played to a full theatre straight through to Sunday.

The cast will also perform an encore showing on Mar. 16 and 18 at 8 pm in the campus theatre.

To successfully run a show it takes precision, timing, choreography, and teamwork, all of which this show- had.

The cast was well chosen; both acting and singing abilities were well rehearsed and well performed.

The costuming looked authentic for a Victorion England time period, and the set was resourceful and imaginative, with a rolling piece functioning as four separate scene areas (the barber shop, pie shop, house interior and bakery.) The use of staircases that rolled on stage and lowered from the ceiling also helped to make the small expanse of a stage seem large enough to be a town.

The song sets were well rehearsed, but for someone who has not seen the play before, hard to understand. The musical is set up with almost every song having overlapping singers and lyrics, meshing two characters' songs into one. This was pulled off well by the FC cast but was a little irritating to the ear, especially for someone who didn't already have a predilection to Sweeney Todd.

The show also seemed to neglect the smaller story lines of a love story, between Todd and Mrs. Lovett as well as between Johanna and Anthony. I am not sure if this was due to the story being written this way, or due to this particular stage production, but at curtain fall, something just seemed to be missing.

The parts of Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford also seemed like they were neglected.

However, much of this negligence is probably because of the powerful performances and strong character development of Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd.

The two main characters have the most time on stage and are given the best opportunity to become familiarized with by the audience. This tends to create the rest of the story to be lost from focus and consequently lost on stage.

The most exciting and entertaining part of the play was a part in which the entire company was able to participate. The town all crammed into Mrs. Lovett's pie-shop, demanded more from Lovett and Tobias (her young helper turned "son'') as Sweeney Todd happily receives his new barber chair. The song and routine of this interaction was well done, and lively, a breath of relief from the dreary feeling that most of the musical exerts.

The actors did a fine job of singing and performing this production, however some. singers seemed to need some work with tone and key, and the play itself needs some work with focus.

I generally liked the play, but found myself thinking, if someone did not already come to this play with a love of the story and stage production, they probably wouldn't like it when they left the theatre