The Jon Blog

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...

Saw "Sweeney Todd" at New York City Opera this evening. Good Lord.

First of all, not even specifically about this production, I'm starting to get fed up with how many strange edits of this show there are. You almost never see the tooth-pulling scene. And this version cut a large chunk of "Parlour Songs," which I usually get annoyed by - but they even cut the entire scene where Tobias is singing along from the bakehouse, and I really missed that.

Specific performances? Well, hard to say for sure, because the State Theatre is so freakin' cavernous. I can tell you, though, from personal experience, that performances can come across in that theatre (specific mention to Jennifer Welch-Babidge in her recent turn as Lucia di Lammermoor, a role I would really love to hear her sing again), so I'm feeling that Mark Delavan, as Sweeney, and Elaine Paige, as Mrs. Lovett, were not at their best this evening. Paige noticably so -- she forgot lyrics on no less than three occasions, and even "Dum dum dum dum"-ed her way through a section of "A Little Priest." Which lyric did she miss in that number, you ask? "Here's the politician so oily he's served with a doily..."

And a chorus member flubbed a lyric, too. It's supposed to go: "The engine roared, the motor hissed/ And who could see where the road would twist/In Sweeney's ledger the entries matched/ A beadle arrived and a beadle dispatched..." It's clearly an AABB rhyme scheme, in keeping with almost every iteration of "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd." Only our chorus boy, on this number, had the motor hissing before his engine roared. Didn't go over so well with my bitchy ears.

Yes, I know this show backwards and forwards. I could probably recite 80% of the lyrics without having the book in front of me. (Please do not quiz me on this at a later time). It's always been one of my favorite musical theater scores. I was in it in college (I was in the chorus, played Fogg, and understudied Sweeney) before I realized that I wasn't put on this earth to be an actor. I have seen many productions of this show, and I know, from personal experience, that the key to a succesful production of "Sweeney Todd" is to have more musical rehearsals than you know what to do with. And it was clear that they had rehearsed some parts better than others -- the chorus, for example, was wonderful on "More Hot Pies" but woefully underrehearsed on "City on Fire."

The quartet (Johanna, Antony, Beadle, Judge) around "Ladies in their Sensitivities" and "Kiss Me" is, perhaps, the most difficult portion of the show musically - particularly in respect to getting the singers and the orchestra together (and balanced!). I have been to more than one final dress rehearsal of "Sweeney Todd" where immediately after the curtain goes down, the conductor yells out that this is the part that needs to be re-rehearsed, and it's invariably done with the four actors standing front and center and the conductor going through the number two or three times. This, apparantly, didn't happen in this production. Then again, the conductor was busy enough keeping up with Ms. Paige when she decided to make up entrances for herself whenever she felt like it. She came in, at one point, a good 2 counts off from the orchestra. He caught up after a couple bars.

As for Sweeney? Mark Delavan was fine in the role, if unexceptional. As an example, I didn't particularly care for his approach to the line, "At last my right arm is complete again!" His delivery was odd -- he had a (long!) pause between "complete" and "again," almost as if the "again" was an afterthought as opposed to the "Thank God it's finally back!" I expect from the line. He never creeped me out the way that Brian Stokes Mitchell did at Kennedy Center two years ago (Compare the two renditions of "Epiphany" -- Stokes freaked me out! He was so intense. And I was watching Delavan through my binoculars (the Africa ones, so you know I had a good view), and I just didn't think it was all there, do you know what I mean?). And Elaine Paige didn't even come close to the brilliant Mrs. Lovett portrayed there by the fabulous Christine Baranski. Hell, even if Paige had remembered her lines, she wouldn't have approached Baranski's performance in the role.

I can only compare the original, of course, from the CD and the video, but still... this was a Sweeney that left a lot to be desired.

So to all of you who I discussed this with before (you know who you are, ye who didn't go to the State Theatre this evening), you didn't miss anything great. But I would have loved to hear your rants!

Damnit, why can't I see a good show? Well, I am going to "Bug" tonight (well, I'm saying tonight about "Sweeney" meaning Wednesday, and tonight about "Bug" being Thursday, as it's technically early Thursday morning, but since I haven't slept, "Sweeney" is still today... you know what I'm talking about, and if you don't, well, it's obvious you never pulled an all-nighter in college.), and I'm going to see "Wicked" on Friday. We'll see. And hopefully I will get to have something nice to say about a show sometime soon.

Posted by Jon at March 25, 2004 01:32 AM | TrackBack