Quick Take
Cabrillo Stage is prepping for its second-ever production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." The first time, back in the early '90s, was controversial because of the musical's dark and gory subject matter. But since then, "Sweeney" has become a beloved touchstone for many audiences. The production opens July 18.
When asked what she is aiming for in her upcoming production at Cabrillo Stage, director Andrea Hart used an unusually vivid term: “gasp-worthy.”
“Something that pulls you up out of the back of your seat,” she added, “something that feels more like spectacle, in certain ways.”
The gasps are almost a given in Stephen Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” which Cabrillo Stage presents as its big summer show, opening July 18 at the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College.
“Sweeney Todd” is easily one of the most edgy and lurid musicals in the Broadway canon, a classic of horror tinged with black comedy. Set in dark and grimy Victorian London, it centers on the title character, a murderous barber bent on revenge, and his meat-pie-baking accomplice, Mrs. Lovett.
Today, “Sweeney Todd” is beloved by many exactly because of its macabre vibe. But its themes are grisly enough that the previous time Cabrillo Stage presented it, more than 30 years ago, it was enormously controversial, with many in the community questioning whether something as grisly should be produced.
Perhaps times and audiences have changed in the intervening years. Regardless, said Hart, her cast and crew are leaning into the play’s, um, bloody nature.
“Whenever you bring it up to a group of people,” said Hart, Cabrillo Stage’s artistic director, “you get one of two extreme reactions: ‘I love it. I will see it whenever and wherever it’s performed and I’ve seen it multiple times.’ Or ‘I don’t like it. I walked out.’ I had someone tell me it was revolting.”
The play, one of Sondheim’s most performed works, turns on a theme that many believe is pertinent to today — that violence, even barbarism, lurks just underneath the veneer of polite society.
The new Cabrillo Stage production, said Hart, uses a prosaic item as a meaningful design element: rags.
“We were talking about rags and something that cleans up messes, but also they hold the stains of everything they’ve cleaned up.”
Set designer Skip Epperson used rag-like coverings on the dirty buildings, and costume designer Lidia Hasenauer also made them a big part of her design.
“Skip started looking at things,” said Hart of Cabrillo Stage’s longtime, award-winning set designer, “and he wanted basically to make it a London that — and I hope this doesn’t scare people away — is like a rotting corpse where outside layers are peeling away to reveal other layers.”
Under music and vocal director Daniel Goldsmith, the new production of “Sweeney Todd” will include a 21-piece pit orchestra. The onstage cast numbers 24.
Curiously, “Sweeney Todd” won’t be the only big splashy Sondheim musical to open on the third weekend of July. Santa Cruz Shakespeare is opening Sondheim’s enchanting “Into the Woods” at the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park on July 19.
For decades, Cabrillo Stage and Santa Cruz Shakespeare have existed in separate spheres as big-ticket summer theater productions, with Stage doing the musicals and SCS the Shakespeare and other serious theater. Is Andrea Hart concerned that SCS is now moving into Cabrillo Stage’s lane by producing musicals?
“I don’t feel we’re in competition with them at all,” she said, adding that she and SCS had discussions about partnering this summer, plans that eventually came to nothing. “The things that we do are so different, and what people look for when they come to a Cabrillo Stage show and a Shakes show is way different. I tend to think that there’s enough for everybody. And people who really love Sondheim are going to want to see both anyway.”
Hart said that she was at first mystified at the appeal of “Sweeney Todd,” but eventually was drawn in by its allure. At its heart, she said, is a sense of dissonance: “No matter what song you’re doing and no matter how light and sorta fun it is, there’s always this dissonance, which is Sondheim clueing you in that though everything seems OK here, there’s something that’s not quite right.”
Cabrillo Stage’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” opens July 18 (preview performance July 17) and runs through Aug. 10 at the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.