Review: Woodstock Arts’ ‘Sweeney Todd’ goes beyond the film in ghastly wickedness

There is good, grisly fun to be had attending the tale of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the classic musical running at Woodstock Arts until October 20. 

Though the production does not feature live musicians, elaborate set design or spectacularly bloody effects, the key elements of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s terrific 1979 thriller — one of the best books and scores ever written for the stage — still work well. Sweeney Todd features lovely music, a wicked plot full of twists and some of the best characters. Audiences with a taste for macabre horror will really enjoy it, despite its limitations.

Much credit is due to the cast of able singers and performers, who are clearly having fun while making a meal of this murderous material under the direction of Zach Stoltz. Chase Byrd and Amy Coenen, playing Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett, act as though they’re checking dream roles off their bucket list, and their enthusiasm is largely contagious.

If you’ve only seen the Tim Burton movie version of this material, you have missed out. That film cut many of the show’s best moments, particularly its intro song and much of the ending, and this production is not in any way sanitized for general audience consumption. Seeing the full show — complete with corpses being carried through the audience during the prelude — is worth the price of admission.

In the story, a wrongfully convicted, bitter man who escaped a prison colony — a barber calling himself Sweeney Todd — returns to London in 1846, hoping to reunite with his wife and child. But returning to his home, he finds his old landlady, Mrs. Lovett, who runs a shop selling meat pies. She recognizes him and gives him his old razors back.

Mrs. Lovett, who was very fond of the man before his imprisonment, tells him that his distraught wife poisoned herself and that his daughter Joanna (Gilda Chestney) is now in the care of Judge Turpin (Scott Lakey) and Beadle Bamford (Stephen DeVillers), the two men responsible for his conviction.

Sweeney, crazed and bloodthirsty, vows violent revenge. But when his sinister plot hits some obstacles, he and Mrs. Lovett take very, very creative measures to try and set the plan right again.

When Sweeney Todd first arrived on Broadway, shocked audiences had no idea how twisted this show would get. Fans of horror and thrillers, however, will really enjoy the story.

Byrd has a beautiful baritone voice and a strong stage presence, but his take on Sweeney is more heroic than terrifying: the single-minded madness of this character is downplayed.

For Mrs. Lovett, Coenen opts to focus on the broadly comic, dotty nature of the character, playing up the accent. But for the plot to work its best, the somewhat sinister, desperate undertones of the character are key, and elements of that are missing in this production. It’s a complicated part, and Coenen does her best with it. She was an audience favorite.

The design of the Woodstock Arts production is a bit zany. Rather than dressing the poor London folk in rags, costume designer Sarah Michelson opts to dress them in rich, shiny outfits full of lush purples and greens — which makes the crowd scenes pop. In contrast, Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett are dressed in white for the first act, then white and red for the second. It offsets them in a way that is stylistic and interesting, though there are a few moments when you wonder why the poor people are dressed in their Easter best.

Though the set design from Sophie Im looks a bit low budget, there are innovative tricks involving trapdoors and a slide which will delight the audience.

One slight issue with the direction is that there are pauses for applause built into the show at the end of every song, which leads to some awkward pacing.

By and large, though, Sweeney Todd is a satisfying meal.

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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.