Vermont Repertory Theatre‘s rousing production of a horrific tale offers a chance to let go of your moral scruples and revel in the macabre. Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street overflows with grisly, cartoon violence yet is so masterfully constructed that it collected nearly every Tony Award available when it premiered in 1979. In this sold-out production, the laughs lie in the exaggeration, the pure pleasure floods from the music, and the suspense arises from powerful performances.
Sondheim’s musical meshes two parallel stories of men recently arrived in London. Anthony is dazzled by the city despite the grunge and poverty, then dazzled even more by the lovely Johanna, the unlucky ward of tyrannical and sexually menacing Judge Turpin. The barber Sweeney Todd finds London detestable. It’s where he lost his wife and daughter after the very same judge sent him to prison on a trumped-up charge. Now he’s returned for vengeance, and his appetite is large.
These two tracks play out briskly, Anthony’s filled with stock romance and Sweeney’s a bundle of dark impulses fueled by the machinations of Mrs. Lovett, a widow with eyes for Sweeney. A great amount of stage blood is shed, some of it with the efficiency of the Industrial Revolution. A world just mastering the art of dehumanization is the ideal backdrop for this story, and it’s where the murderous Sweeney Todd first appeared: in an 1846 Victorian serial.
Christopher Bond revived the story in a 1970 play and added the beefy backstory of Sweeney’s motivation: A cruel judge raped the barber’s young wife, driving her mad, and exiled Sweeney to an Australian prison.
Sondheim took the fury-filled plot to another level by adding music that amplifies both the comedy and the violence. The melodrama of obsession roars forward, propelled by music that fills about 80 percent of the show with song or ambient scoring. It’s obsession made audible.
With melody to summon them, Sondheim can pinball from character to character, showing parallels and contrasts. The music may dwindle to a leitmotif or swell to a proclamation, but it doesn’t truly stop until events come to a peak. The resulting silence becomes as powerful as the driving score.
At last Friday’s sold-out show, that finale hushed the crowd to pure attention. As cartoonish as the characters may be, director Michael Fidler elicited intense performances that gripped the audience.
Fidler is good at launching audiences into genuine gusto for gruesome deeds. To pick a single perfect moment, consider the end of Act 1, when composer, director and performers collaborate to reveal to Sweeney the musical’s grotesque premise.
Sondheim interlaces two songs in a double duet of nihilism for Sweeney and Lovett. Chloe Fidler, as Lovett, has been showering sparks of weird, volatile joy since the start, and now she propels the character from oddball to full-bore zany. Kyle Ferguson, splendid as Sweeney, shows the light dawning in his widening eyes as Lovett spoons out euphemisms for what she might do with any by-products of Sweeney’s vengeful razor work. And the director brings the musical exchange to life with pace and the right repetition to make their shared understanding climb higher and higher.
Musical director Ashley O’Brien and the nine-piece band are essential, too. With a strong string section, a full complement of horns and a huge percussion array, O’Brien leads the musicians through Sondheim’s clever evocations of varying musical styles. Whether it’s comic bassoon, mournful cello or single-star-in-the-sky triangle, the band fulfills the complex score.
Structurally, the show is a series of confrontations in duets studded with hyperbole. Rather than exaggerate their wildness, director Fidler intensifies the characters’ dark eccentricities by steering the actors to matter-of-fact comfort with their impulses. Ferguson’s Sweeney twirls his razor as if his obsession were a hobby. Matthew Grant Winston, as the judge, glows with quiet evil down to his enamel-blue eye shadow, encased in perversions he cannot cast off. Eamon Lynch, as the assistant Tobias, changes his loyalties as swiftly as his hairstyle, unfazed by fraud but repulsed by body parts.
Then there is the romantic relief from Zach Stark, as Anthony, and Rachel Weinfeld, as Johanna, who personify innocence in a world where lives are short and dismal. Stark and Weinfeld heroically paddle against this furious current, and Sondheim’s wit ties up their sweet love with a sarcastic bow.
The cast of 14 is uniformly strong. Kristen Bures, as the Beggar Woman, mixes plaintive and creepy notes; Michael Godsey, as the Beadle, wears the curdled smile of corruption; and Ian Ferris, as Adolfo, is a swindling blowhard you can easily root against until his fate becomes repugnantly clear. Five ensemble players juggle multiple roles and provide harmonic and scenic bedrock.
Vermont Repertory doesn’t miss a chance to enhance the story, using superb costumes from Lyn Feinson, clever makeup from Kaitie Bessette and subtle, stirring choreography from movement director Keely Agan. Set designer Paul Ledak employs color, texture and lots of clever hinges to surprise us.
The production’s only flaws stem from limited space. The confined multilevel set can’t support the sprawling action, and the finale will be maddeningly hard for much of the audience to see. In a battle between live music and miked performers, the musicians win every time, so lines and lyrics are often lost. But these limitations are easy to forgive.
If the modern equivalent to melodrama is professional wrestling, Sweeney Todd offers the same guilty pleasures as those body slams. Watching it is a way to howl at the state of the world while a haunting score washes over you. Horror allows you to feel fear at a safe distance, and this production lets you rock securely between laughing and cringing; go ahead, give in.