Stephen Sondheim might best be described as the American musical theatre’s greatest enigma. At the age of 77, he’s been the recipient of countless awards (including seven Tonys, more than any other composer), and the New York Times called him “the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater.” And yet, unfortunately, as a 2002 Smithsonian article rightfully stated, “Sondheim has never quite escaped the ghetto of cult enthusiasm….[he] has always been an acquired taste. He’s never achieved the sort of popularity of Andrew Lloyd-Webber or had a megahit on the order of Cats.”
Despite a rabid fan base among musical theatre insiders, most of Sondheim’s artistically daring and harmonically challenging musicals — Company, A Little Night Music, Follies, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George — aren’t often produced by community or even large-scale repertory theatres. Admittedly, I’ve been a musical theatre fan for nearly four decades, yet only in recent years have I seen many of Sondheim’s works on stage for the first time. (And, like many other folks sitting in the audience, I bought a ticket based largely on the star-power of celebrities cast in the leading roles.)
However, perhaps no other work by Sondheim — with the possible exception of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum — is as accessible as Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, launching its third national tour in an enormously appealing production at American Conservatory Theater.
This scaled-down Sweeney isn’t the decadent, blood-soaked extravaganza which stunned Broadway in 1979. That production wasn’t exactly a huge success. The show’s producers never earned back their original $1 million investment, and it’s rumored that half the opening night audience left in disgust at intermission. Still, that first legendary Sweeney, with its massive industrial sets and gargantuan orchestra and cast, ran for over 500 performances, earned nine Tony Awards (including a fourth for Angela Lansbury), and ushered in the era of the mega-musical.
So it’s interesting that when British director John Doyle staged this celebrated revival on London’s West End in 2004, subsequently transferring to Broadway the following season, he did it on a comparatively small if not miniscule scale — without an orchestra, the actors themselves playing the score on stage. (I couldn’t help but wonder how the legendary diva Patti LuPone reacted when she learned she’d be honking out a melody on a tuba.)
