DESIGNATED DELICACY OF Broadway’s Sweeney Todd: Meat pies.
Substitute delicacy of Vegas’ Sweeney Todd: Doughnuts.
The difference? The latter is a delicious production with a hole in the middle.
Vegas community theater is rarely equal to this level of spit-shine, Great-White-Way-wannabe professionalism: five Equity actors, a mature approach, vivid sets, eerily effective lighting, crisp staging, even a barber chair that dumps fresh corpses for dismemberment down a slope into Mrs. Lovett’s meat-pie-making basement, plus a power-packed orchestra carved out of the Las Vegas Philharmonic. It’s redolent of Aladdin’s Broadway series and Mandalay Bay’s Mamma Mia. Departing the Horn Theater at the Community College of Southern Nevada’s Cheyenne campus, you’d be forgiven for momentarily expecting to exit onto Times Square. It’s that damn good. Technically.
But for theatergoers unimpressed with spectacular trappings minus the soul of a story and a gripping lead performance to lend it heart, this Sweeney Todd—Stephen Sondheim’s brilliantly grisly musical nightmare about a vengeful, murderous, half-mad barber in sinister 19th-century London—is as dull as a discarded razor.
As the titular throat-slasher who returns to exact revenge on the immoral judge who stole his wife and daughter and falsely imprisoned him—and who eventually vents his retribution on any Londoner foolish enough to visit his shop atop Mrs. Lovett’s pie store for a shave and wind up a pastry ingredient—Douglas Baker can’t be accused of laziness. A talented performer who is effective in the right role, Baker practically exposes the seams in his performance, so strenuously does he sweat to pump up the malevolence to approximate Sweeney’s bloodcurdling charisma. But nature blessed Baker with a likable mug and amiable demeanor that severely undercut his noble attempt to terrify us with Sweeney’s gruesome vendetta.
Baker’s rage rarely registers, and peering out through sad-sack eyes, he occasionally resembles a kicked puppy. The performance sucks the energy, tension and very life out of Sondheim’s masterful libretto (gorgeous tunes, including breakout ballads “Pretty Women” and “Not While I’m Around”) and Hugh Wheeler’s macabre story.
The final 20 minutes barreling toward the operatically violent and tragic climax (madness and death for everybody!) should vibrate with impending doom, like a rumbling avalanche of horror about to crash through our deepest fears. Not a light dusting of snow.
Despite Baker’s limitations, director Philip Shelburne shares the blame for failing to crank up this Sweeney to somewhere between the dramatic paper cut it is and the emotionally gaping wound it should be. Baker flashes one tantalizing hint at the Sweeney he could have been if properly pushed, fleetingly freezing our souls when, after barely missing an opportunity to slice open the judge, he flies into a rage and vows revenge on all of London. He stares, with chilling menace, directly into the audience, daring anyone to risk a shave in his bloody barber chair. That’s our Sweeney, for one delicious, hide-and-slide-into-your-seat moment.
But even the throat-slittings are lackadaisically staged: gentle flicks to the neck, rather than the vicious slashings of a man gone mad. You half-expect the fake blood to spurt prissy pink rather than crimson.
In a performance that could have been further sharpened in the directing, Ellen Lawson still manages a quirky and spirited turn as Mrs. Lovett, the barber’s partner in turning human flesh into pie filling. Yeoman work also is turned in by Taylor Campbell and Shannon Cangey as lovesick sailor Anthony and his dewy young love (and Sweeney’s daughter) Johanna; Dolly Coulter as the beggar woman with a secret identity; and especially Adam Michael Kaokept, who portrays sweet, gimpy Toby the street hustler with comic chops and dramatic pop.
In the key role of Judge Turpin, Kenneth Cavett sports a feral, vulpine look—with his creepy countenance, sunken eyes and high forehead trailing a stringy wig of greasy-gray locks, he evokes a malevolent Ben Franklin—but miscalculates Turpin’s lizard-like villainy, radiating mere unpleasantness.
With its well-groomed production values, CCSN’s Sweeney Todd wants to give you the closest shave of your life. But under the lather is a five-o’clock shadow.
Curtain Call
Far smaller in scope but far greater in impact is Floyd Collins at UNLV’s intimate Black Box Theatre. The unlikely musical, inspired by the true story of a desperate attempt to free a miner trapped in a Kentucky cave for 17 days in 1925, and the media carnival it incited, is mounted with minimal staging and massive heart by the Nevada Conservatory Theatre.
One of the most absorbing, touching and surprisingly melodic NCT productions in recent memory, Floyd flies on the passions of a committed cast with invigorating chemistry. Especially effective in their brotherly bond are the charismatic Rob Howard as Floyd and magnetic Steve Booth as his sib Homer, as well as Paul Finocchiaro as Skeets, a reporter-turned-determined rescuer. Susanne Burns directs with a deft touch and refreshing imagination, gracefully applied.
Claustrophobia rarely feels this expansive. Floyd Collins entraps our emotions.
The Marquee
CCSN has announced next season’s lineup. Look for: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Winter Wonderettes, The Rope and The Days of Wine and Roses. As this season nears its final act, The Laramie Project opens April 22 at Las Vegas Academy; UNLV’s Nevada Conservatory Theatre tackles Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge starting April 30; and the road-company version of 42nd Street taps into the Aladdin May 5.
Thank the theater gods, it’s the pre-Disneyfied 42nd Street.