Ottawa is wowed by Sweeney Todd at Centrepointe Theatre ( Photo: C.J. Roussakis )
4 stars
In Sweeney Todd, “a little off the top, Mr. Barker,” may end in a bloody loss of one’s head.
After being wrongfully accused of murder by Judge Turpin at the beginning of the play, Sweeney Todd, also known as Benjamin Barker, returns to London with the help of a sailor named Anthony Hope. He opens a barbershop above Mrs. Lovett’s Meat Pie Shop, infamous for the city’s worst pie.
With her help, Todd intends to rid London of the corrupt aristocracy including Judge Turpin who has adopted Todd’s daughter Johanna as his ward.
Director John Doyle gave Steve Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning 1979 musical about a throat-slicing barber the true feel of a Broadway musical with his own twist.
Doyle scrapped the traditional Broadway production, and hired a cast of actors who can play their own instruments, with even the title character playing the guitar and the flute. It was confusing at first, especially as the plot started out differently than the known synopsis.
But Doyle keeps the action moving with enough energetic scenes and suspense to keep the whole audience on the edge of their seats in Centrepoint Theatre.
Every time a character was killed off, red light flooded the stage and a steam-whistle hooted loudly.
Despite the fact that many of the actors were killed off, they had to stay in the play in order to play their instruments. So Doyle suited them up in white trench-coats dripping with blood.
Sweeney Todd is the first of many Broadway musical Charles McFarland, the artistic director, will bring to the revamped Centrepointe Theatre, as well as the new Shenkman Centre, which opens this fall. McFarland knows the audience well, as he ran the Great Canadian Theatre Company in its heydey during the early 2000s.