By Mal Vincent
An opera opening in Norfolk is a life-affirming experience – celebratory. Even routinely, it’s about as close as the arts get to an event that mixes real pearls with dipped pearls.
“Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” | Handout photo.
Tuxedos with jeans.
To be seen is necessary. Prideful. Glitzy. Phonies mix with aficionados, and all are genuinely gleeful to participate. But notably, even after 40 years, they continue to be amazed that we even HAVE an opera company. Not just an opera company, but one of the more respected regional opera companies in the land.
Add to the clamor that this is the opening of the 40th season of the Virginia Opera, and it’s doubly giddy. On stage, where it is necessary to eventually look, the result is mixed. A reverential rather than daring semi-concert staging of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is better sung than it is acted, but we’re in the mood to take what we can get.
And we get quite a lot.
Carefully directed by Ron Daniels and conducted by Adam Turner, it is somewhat lacking in the brash Cockney mischief that should be part of Sondheim’s take on the “penny dreadful” melodrama. We needed to have more fun with this than we are allowed but, still, we are dealing with a musical theater masterpiece that feels like a discovery no matter how many times you see it.
The fully staged original in 1979, with Angela Lansbury, was a visual amazement, in addition to everything else. There have been small, intimate productions. There have been concert versions such as the one that is opening PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center.” Even a version in which the actors also play the musical instruments (with Patti LuPone). Even Tim Burton’s movie version, with Johnny Depp and the brazen Helena Bonham Carter.
Ricardo Hernandez’s set, a holdover from a St. Louis production, is appropriate but minimal. Augmented by no more than props and a walk-through, semi-opaque back curtain, the proceedings are close to a concert version, compared to a fully staged one. The concept, though, is on target, with one-half the stage a Victorian frame and the other a corrugated steel fence thing that is meant, we can only guess, to suggest the impending industrial revolution.
Emily Rebholz’s costumes are a mixed shopping spree. Whoever suggested that modern leather coat the romantic Anthony wears in the last act? The red and white madhouse segment looks more color-mismatched than mad. Kyle Lang’s choreography is all but nonexistent, which may be for the best if that opening skip-around is an example.
Stephen Powell, who debuted locally as Falstaff earlier, is in fine voice as the ominous barber who comes back after 15 years to seek revenge for the supposed death of his wife and abduction of his father. He looks the part, and he captures the soul-searching qualities, but he is more a force for good than a threat of evil. When he holds his sharpened razor aloft and proclaims that “at last, my right arm is complete again,” we should know the threat. The chill is not there.
Mezzo-soprano Phyllis Pancella lacks the bluster and comic timing that should be a part of the lovably vulgar Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney’s personal chef who turns his dead bodies into one of the most successful meat-pie stores in London. The role is arguably the best in musical theater, but it requires comic timing and verve. Mrs. Lovett is an amoral, murderous delight, and all the material to suggest her is there. It is difficult to overplay this role, but to underplay it can be fatal.
Andre Chiang is a vocal highlight with the yearning ballad “Johanna,” but he hardly suggests the callow youth required. Amanda Opuszynski is a lovely lyric soprano who fully suggests her need to “sing, if I can’t fly” as the ingenue Johanna. Diana DiMarzio has just the right satirical take on the beggar woman, a part we saw her play on Broadway with the LuPone company. She’s a hoot, and tragic, too.
A rousing wake-up is signaled by the fine tenor contribution of Javier Abreu as the bogus barber Pirelli, with a liberal serving of ham. Just right. Particularly poignant and well-sung is the last-act ballad “Nothing Can Harm You Now” as contributed by David Blalock, a good example of the company’s “emerging artist” program.
Let none of the naysayings prevent you from experiencing the good qualities of this ambitious production. That’s what live theater is all about. Add a little more mischief, a lot more threat and a good deal more insouciance, and this would be a demon who provides a chuckle. It is needed.