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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Also see Richard's reviews of Jagged Little Pill, Wakey Wakey, Jagged Little Pill and 12th Annual LaBute New Theater Festival
We're frequently tricked into looking over our shoulders in this three-hour spellbinder with the fearsome and operatic Chandler Spradling as the demon barber of Fleet Street. He's paired with Jenelle Gilreath-Owens, who thrums with ingenuity as Mrs. Lovett, the pie-maker downstairs. Her giddy, precise, deferential style gently mixes with Mr. Spradling's deep-etched sense of doom, into a compound that bleeds through the entire cast. The up-to-date lighting design is by the director and Lauren Perry as part of a gripping realization of the 1979 musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, based on the 1970 stage play by Christopher Bond. The show, set in the 19th century, first opened on Broadway at the Uris Theatre and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, during its original sixteen month run. And now the hypnotic music direction at the Greenfinch Theatre and Dive is by Stephen Schermitzler, blithely reanimating the most music-heavy of all the Sondheim scores, featuring a rich-sounding nine-piece band to conjure a harrowing kind of melodrama. The fine costumes are by Jen Blum-Tatara, with sharp-edged choreography by the director. The excellent props are by Kel Rohlf, with fight choreography by Angela Healy. Once again, Fly North Theatricals sets an almost impossibly high standard for powerful, stripped-to-the-essence revivals of great musicals in the Midwest. The opening moments come like a fast-paced series of slashes across the throat, with tight, blood-drenched light cues and knife-like group movement on stage. It's a Sweeney Todd that pushes fate forward with high quality work all around. The set is deceptively simple, with movable white fabric panels and an (implied) baking oven off-stage, for additional performance space. Matt Ingram plays the Beadle (a sort of officer of the court) and he approaches the role with glee. He sings beautifully, and every one of his Snidely Whiplash poses is underpinned with a grisly intent. It's not like the acting style you see at the vast Municipal Opera, where most of the audience is at least a hundred feet away from the stage and all the performers might as well be wearing masks. Instead, each character at the Greenfinch comes right up to you, like gems to be appraised in a jeweler's pick. There seem to be two Judge Turpins on stage, each simultaneously embodied by the actor Ken Haller, wearing a huge Louis XIV wig in court, which is correct for grandeur if not history, and the other when he scourges himself bloody, as the perverse moral authority of the story. In his performance along the wide and shallow storefront stage, this Turpin seems transfixed by his own abuse of power, staring up dead-eyed from the bottom of a pool of guilt and desire. Dereis Lambert and Isobel Ramsey make for a heartfelt pair of separated lovers as the good-hearted sailor Anthony and his delicate, warded-off Johanna. We see Crispin Shininger's youthfully naive Toby as if light-years away, through a telescope, selling hair tonic before Sweeney sets up shop, and later as another trapped innocent. Nathan Hakenewerth is straight out of comic opera as Mr. Pirelli, the number one barber in the neighborhood, who reappears in the production's hard-working chorus along with principal bass Parker Miller, principal soprano Margaret Beekman, and principal alto Mia Millican. The great Rachel Bailey scurries wretchedly on and off as the mad Beggar Woman, a stand-in for the diseased underside of a great city. Over her shoulder, the barber's deadly contraption becomes a miniature for every switch and pulley of the English workhouse and worse. The vocal constructions on stage are bold, complex, and assured. And Sondheim's hypnotic arrangements burgeon in our heads like searing aural set pieces: pyrotechnics and parades that push every other thought aside. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, produced by Fly North Theatricals, runs through August 9, 2026 ,at the Greenfinch Theatre and Dive, 2525 South Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.flynorth.org. Cast (in order of appearance): The Fly North Band: Production Staff: |
