The Worst Pies in London

Forget the movie. Go see the North American touring production of Sweeney Todd. It’s on at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto for eight more days – until December 9th.

As Mrs. Lovett’s unsuspecting customers would say, “God, that’s good!”

Okay, so I’m slightly biased in favour of Stephen Sondheim (I know, I know, you wouldn’t have been able to tell without the warning), but, even if you hate his musicals, this production was brilliantly designed, directed, and acted. The story of Sweeney Todd, the wronged demon barber of Fleet Street who murders his customers out of revenge and, along with his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, bakes them into pies is told by the patients and staff of the insane asylum. The curtain rises on the doctors attending a young boy in a straitjacket. They unbind him and hand him a violin and a bow. Then they themselves pick up trumpets, cellos, piccolos, clarinets.

There is no orchestra in the pit. The actors play and sing the music on their own.

Beadle Bamford is in the rear, playing the keyboard; Anthony and Johanna’s matching cellos that sing love duets along with their owners. Tobias’s mind and his bow-work both become increasingly erratic.

The back wall and the floor are made of wood slats, both capable of being lit from behind so the light shines through the cracks. In the centre of the stage is a black, wooden coffin that serves as barber’s chair, table, bar, and judge’s stand. The entire cast of nine or ten spends most of the show in this claustrophobic space, blurring the lines between musician and actor, audience and narrator.

For a show about a vengeful killer, a lecherous judge, and a multiple rape, there is no violent or sexual action. The young lovers don’t even kiss. The slash of a razor through the air, a piercing train whistle, and red lighting signify Todd’s wicked deeds. John Doyle, you see, is a director who knows that the important thing is what the audience doesn’t get to watch, not what it does. As Sweeney Todd cuts throat after throat, the blood is absent, but the tension mounts higher and higher. The bare-bones style suits the breakneck pacing of the book; you already understand all you have to know about this story, it seems to be saying. After all, who doesn’t understand anger, the lust for revenge, greed, selfishness, and horror? You don’t really need to see who killed whom, and where he put the body, and why he did it at that specific time.

Admittedly, visual metaphors are tricky things to handle: sometimes, the show seems to go too far in the “Look: SYMBOLISM!!!!” direction. The little white coffin that seems alternately to represent a baby and the death of innocence is a bit much. So are the dead characters who wear lab coats stained with blood. But the sound of Mrs. Lovett pouring red liquid from bucket to bucket as Sweeney kills again says more than gobs of Hollywood gore ever could; even though we can’t see what he sees, Tobias’s screams let us know exactly what’s before his eyes.

There isn’t a single weak performance from the cast – how could there be, when each actor’s role dovetails into his scene partners’ and each actress depends on her castmates to play the instruments behind her voice? Judy Kaye is funny, practical, and chillingly amoral as Mrs. Lovett. Alexander Gemignani has only to open his mouth, and all eyes are on Sweeney. Keith Buterbaugh’s Judge Turpin and Benjamin Eakeley’s Beadle Bamford are hair oil and hypocrisy; Lauren Molina’s Johanna has the on-edge sweetness of a butterfly trapped in a child’s hands.

For a show where the music and the voices are coming from the same places, there’s hardly any problem with sound levels. Sondheim’s two geniuses are for making abhorrent subjects sly and witty and mixing honourable sentiments with ominous horror. The first he displays at its best when Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett discuss baking bodies into pies at the end of the first act in the duet “A Little Priest” (“Is it any good?”/”Sir, it’s too good, at least!”). As for the second, the beautiful “Not While I’m Around” could be a lyrical ballad of love and devotion. Well, not “could be” – it is. But, at the same time, it’s as frightening as any Scream film or The Ring wannabe.

Perhaps the most curious thing about Sweeney Todd is the way you start out knowing there’s no good guys, but, hey, at least you’re on the side of the better guys. By intermission, well, okay, you’re on the side of the least bad guys. Halfway through the second act, you acknowledge they’re all equally bad, so maybe you’ll just be on the side of the bad guys who already suffered the most for their sins.

Maybe, by the end, you won’t be on anyone’s side at all.

Have a little priest?