Culture

Perseverance Theatre delivers first-rate performance of grim 'Sweeney Todd'

Perseverance Theatre's tightly coordinated "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" holds the audience's attention with the same deft grip and purpose as the title character holds his razor. The production has good singing and acting, but it's the fast and smooth flow of one scene to the next that keeps you holding your breath, even if you're familiar with the story.

Stephen Sondheim's "musical thriller" — half Broadway, half opera — tells a woeful saga about a barber in Victorian London who, driven mad by injustice, becomes obsessed with revenge by murdering his customers. Poverty, insanity, pollution and abuse of power fill the universe of the plot and setting and, no, there is no happy ending. A few points of comic relief are inserted, but this is no musical comedy.

The music is thick and dissonant, with tunes that don't quite become songs, melodies that forever seem a few notes out of whack. But it's never dull. You keep waiting for a real show-stopper to rise from the orchestra pit, something you can hum when you leave the show, just as you keep waiting and hoping for something to happen that will bring comfort to the miserable people on stage. But neither happen.

It's all intended to keep one off balance and succeeds marvelously. Sondheim may not have Richard Rodgers' catalogue of hit songs, but he is a master sound-crafter. The ensembles are always exciting and the music builds from one climax to another. Which is why the audience in the Discovery Theatre on opening night gave a cheering, standing ovation. One can't imagine such a response to a nonmusical rendition of this melodramatic, gothic tragedy.

Along with director Shona Osterhout, Hali Duran deserves much credit for choreography that clicked and fascinated without ever going over the top and becoming motion for the mere sake of motion. Art Rotch's grim set, thoroughly Dickensian in the first act, was brightened in the second act by the simple device of putting the performers into costumes highlighted with bright reds.

In the title role, Enrique Bravo seemed a bit young for a man who's just spent the last 15 years in prison, or rather exile. But his gloomy, glowering portrayal caught the idea of a man possessed by a dark and angry god. Victoria Bundonis' Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney's partner in crime, was lively and convincing as a struggling woman cheerfully willing to help the man she loves — and accept the incidental windfall from his enterprise.

Leonid Grinberg made a soulful Anthony, the sincere sailor who comes as close as anything in the script to a good guy. His love interest, and Sweeney's long-lost daughter, Johanna, was fetchingly performed by Jessica Skiba. Keith Patric McCoy's judge, the biggest villain in a show full of them, was callous and lecherous, but also yearning for redemption and some flicker of sweetness in life.

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Zebadiah Bodine as the innocent serving boy, Tobias, and Kelly Rossberg as the smarmy, brutish Beadle were the standouts among the secondary characters. The cast was rounded out by Tommy Schoffler as the flim-flamming, blackmailing Pirelli and Christina Apathy as the raving Beggar Woman. Five more performers supplied the Greek chorus ensemble.

William Todd Hunt gave excellent direction to his orchestra of eight players. Though the singers, assisted by microphones, sometimes struggled with their notes, they sang with conviction and energy, selling their unsavory confection without letting up. The crowd, having lapped up a solid presentation of a peculiar masterpiece, left buzzing.

SWEENEY TODD will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and at 4 p.m. Sunday in the Discovery Theatre. Tickets are available at centertix.net.

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham was a longtime ADN reporter, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print. He retired from the ADN in 2017.

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