Our eyes don’t normally well up with tears during “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Stephen Sondheim’s horror-musical during which throats are gruesomely slashed and cannibalism is positively hilarious.
2 hours and 45 minutes with one intermission. On the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W. forty sixth St.
But minutes into the brand new Broadway revival starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford that opened Sunday night on the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, I used to be already verklempt.
Such is the overwhelming experience of hearing Sondheim’s glorious 1979 rating in all its splendor played by a 26-person orchestra — not in some cavernous concert hall or opera house, but an actual Broadway theater. It’s been some time.
Director John Doyle’s 2005 small-scale actor-musician production with Patti LuPone and the 2017 immersive off-Broadway staging at Barrow Street Theatre were otherwise wonderful, but director Thomas Kail’s revival packs an unmatched orchestral punch.
That famous first lyric, “Attend the story of Sweeney Todd,” isn’t a lot a suggestion this time, but a full-throated command.
So, off we go along with Groban as Sweeney, a Victorian-era London barber who’s wrongfully imprisoned by the lecherous judge who covets Todd’s wife, Lucy. Being locked up in faraway Australia turns him right into a monster, hellbent on killing Judge Turpin (Jamie Jackson) and Turpin’s smarmy sidekick, the Beadle (John Rapson), back in England. He gets to London, and things turn bloody bloody.
Immediately we realize that Groban is just not the menacing, feral Todd that Len Cariou and Michael Cerveris were, but a calmer chap with an ax to grind. This alternative cuts each ways. Sweeney is more human, yes, but some scenes lack intensity. His song “Epiphany” — during which he declares, “All of them should die!” — isn’t as scary accurately. Still, Groban is as well-sung a Sweeney as you’ll find.
Fresh off the boat, the barbaric barber heads to Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Shop on Fleet Street, where he’s served the worst pies in London and we’re served Ashford’s nonstop hilarity.
Ashford is a remarkably gifted comedienne. Nonetheless, there’s more to her Lovett than schtick. With modern flair, she conjures memories of the very real women who’ve befriended serial killers like Ted Bundy or Charles Manson to seek out purpose or love.
She’s wildly funny: Her “By The Sea,” during which Mrs. Lovett imagines retiring to the coast along with her murderer man-friend, is jammed with more jokes than we knew could fit. Yet she’s sad too — achingly eager to have anyone by her side.
Sweeney and his eccentric former landlady team up — he wants revenge, she wants him — and embark on a bloody rampage through London.
But how you can cover their tracks? Mrs. Lovett’s shop is struggling and she will be able to’t afford high-quality meat (Yikes, “Sweeney Todd” might be set in 2023 NYC), so she hatches the maniacal plan to make use of the bodies of Sweeney’s victims to fill her pastries.
During certainly one of the best Act One finales ever composed, “A Little Priest,” Ashford’s and Groban’s conspirators attempt to crack one another up like “SNL” actors.
On their murder spree, Sweeney and Lovett swim in a sea of lost souls.
Jordan Fisher plays Anthony, a bright-eyed sailor who falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna (Maria Bilbao), who’s trapped by the evil judge. Fisher wins us over with guilelessness, but doesn’t quite nail the soaring “Johanna.” He’ll get there.
And the way fortunate we’re to look at Ruthie Ann Miles take the role of the crazed beggar woman and add incomparable depth and pain to her deranged shouts and cries.
Gaten Matarazzo from “Stranger Things” battles one other monster as little Toby, initially assistant to the funny Italian barber Pirelli (Nicholas Christopher, flawless), turned waiter on the pie shop. He’s haunting as he croons “Not While I’m Around” to his beloved Mrs. Lovett. “Sweeney” is the rare musical where an actor having fought Vecna on Netflix actually adds to their performance.
Not all is ideal on the pie shop, though. What hinders “Hamilton” director Kail’s conventional but on no account blasé production is Steven Hoggett’s largely pointless choreography.
Hoggett has done good work in past shows reminiscent of “Once” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” during which movement sprung up in an organic, magical way.
But in “Sweeney Todd,” the dancing and gestures he’s staged are overabundant and clumsy, stealing our attention away from Sondheim’s peerless lyrics and relaxing the should-be-tense songs. Stillness is rather more frightening than actors spastically chopping the air with their hands.
And there are occasions when it looks as if Kail just didn’t like a song very much, so he tacked on an interpretive dance upstage on Mimi Lien’s bridge-and-tunnel set to maneuver it along.
Regardless, all it takes is a swell of the orchestra and the hellfire wails of the chorus to joltingly remind us we’re at certainly one of the best musicals ever written.
