SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

Date of Run: September 23- October 9, 2016
ROLE: Chorus

My second show of 2016 was a show on my bucket list of shows that I wanted to do at least once: Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This was my second show at the Raven Theater in Healdsburg after appearing in Evita three years earlier. Auditions for this show were in late May and mine was the very last one. I sang the most operatic theatre song I could think of, which was Old Man River, did a few scales with Lucas Sherman, the music director, so that he could know my range, and did a couple line readings for the roles of Sweeney Todd and Anthony, which felt weird since I was speaking song lyrics. I told Carl Hamilton, the director, that I was fine with whatever role he gave me because this was a show I always wanted to do. Costume fittings were on June 1, and then for the longest time we were waiting for the first rehearsal which wasn't until August 15.

Kerry Duvall, the stage manager, told me months later, that they still talked about my audition and said they were surprised and amazed at my voice and how well I did that song.

I'm reminded of the last time I saw this show when the Santa Rosa Junior College did this show four years earlier. I had auditioned in the first round, which was for the main roles, wasn't taken and then I decided not to audition for the chorus and did something else instead. After seeing the show, I felt that one day I would wake up one day and say "Damn, I wish I had done that." But not this time. I felt I made the right choice to do this show instead of something else because, apparently, this musical was not often staged in Sonoma County. At the first read through, Carl said that he had wanted to do this show for ten years, but each theater company he approached had turned him down, not wanting to stage it.

In the cast were my friends Matt Witthaus (Sweeney Todd), Tika Moon (Mrs. Lovett), Garet Waterhouse (Judge Turpin) and Athena Gundlach. The rest of the cast consisted of Jackson Phillips (Anthony), Emily Doyle (Johanna), Troy Evans (Toby), Robert Finney (Beadle Bamford), Kelly Hitman (The Beggar Woman), Craig Bainbridge (Pirelli), Joe Gellura, Carolyn Cole-Schweizer, Kimmy Colisch, Arabella Harrison, Ariana LaMark, Whitney Lawson, Christine Naber, Tory Rotlisberger, Jolie Santos-Ramsey, George Schweizer and Rebecca West.

The rehearsal schedule was the worst possible time, starting at six in the evening, which meant I had to hope to get off work at five or ten minutes past five at the latest and get to Healdsburg or Santa Rosa where we had the early rehearsals. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were easy for me, when I was called to them, because they were my days off, but the traffic was terrible. When the show was finally running, I had an easier time on Saturdays and Sundays getting to Healdsburg.

The rehearsal schedule for the first four weeks of rehearsal we focused on music from Monday thru Wednesday and on Thursdays we had choreography. Blocking the show did not come until two weeks before opening.

The music director of the show was Lucas Sherman. I had never worked with him before but had seen a few things that he had done in Sonoma County. From the start though, I was not in agreement with some of the choices he made when teaching the music. There were quite a few songs where he did not follow Sondheim's tempo markings, dynamics and music terms. For instance, in the opening number "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," there was one that read poco a poco, and we were supposed to start loud and then get softer, but he had us do it in reverse. Not to nick pick, but there were times I wished he had done it the other way.

He also did not appear to be very fond of solos for the chorus members. While there were some, probably half the solo lines were duets or groups rather than one person. Whatever the reason was, I wish we had gotten to have our own solo in the show because the chorus in that show gets so little compared to the characters with names. While in the end, the show sounded wonderful, there are still some things I wish had been more like the original Broadway cast recording.

The choreographer was another matter entirely. His name was Tony and he was the most bizarre choreographer I ever worked with. He and Carl had vowed to do this show together when Carl first wanted to stage it, but two years before it could be realized, Tony had a fall, hurt his spine and almost died or at least, that's what I heard later. Now he was using a walker. A choreographer with a walker, if you can imagine that. To show the cast what he wanted he brought in Diane Dearmore to show the cast the steps. While I could get over all that if he had a clear mind, let's just say he was not what I would call efficient. 

Choreographing the show was a nightmare. For starters Tony was not good at communicating and he was horrible with names, forgetting mine literally ten seconds after hearing it and confusing people with other people. In staging the opening number, he would wave his arms if he needed us to move to the next part and one point, he was waving his arms all over like he was possessed. He also spent a lot of time on that opening, even though it was so simplistic.

 

The Opening Number



Nothing was comparable to the staging of "A Little Priest." The concept of the piece was to have the entire cast on stage in partners, with Matt and Tika going around and Matt slashing the throat of someone. By the end of the piece everyone would be on the ground dead. Tony wanted the dance to be a half time waltz, but it became clear early on that he was going to make this more difficult than it should have been. It was too obvious that he had not listened to the music (if he had, not a lot) and he was constantly confused about where we were and what would happen next. Every time he counted the tempo for us he absent-mindedly lapsed into saying 1-2-3-4-5-6 da-da-da-da-da-dee-da-dee-da, etc. and and often, it sounded nothing like the song. It was very hard to keep count with that. One night we went on about two hours, progressing very little, without even Diane knowing what was going on. Most of our Thursday rehearsals were spent on this number after running the opening more times than actually necessary. So much so that we were still working on it two days before opening.

Then even more annoyances came about two weeks before opening. On the first day when we were supposed to start blocking the show we found that the choreography would have to be changed, and some people repositioned because the set was going to have a few levels rather than being flat as we had been staging. Which meant spending two of three hours of rehearsal reworking it and running it over and over. Needless to say, many of us were annoyed. I still have a hard time comprehending that they would choreograph something without knowing the dimensions of the stage or taking such things into account. And to make matters worse, Tony was a perfectionist. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there came a point where he should have put that aside because he squandered too much time.

Long story short, Tony was an old dinosaur long past his prime.

The second day was not much further progress. Most of it was spent on the small minuet dance in "Poor Thing." Then after that moment we were instructed to trudge oh so slowly offstage leaving a good thirty seconds of silence. 

Each day brought little progress, even though Carl was a minimalist director and let the actors bring a lot to the table, while rarely inserting anything himself. This sadly left some scenes uninteresting, such as "Kiss Me," where Anthony and Johanna are supposed to sing to each other, but they never budged from where they were standing. Unfortunately, Carl subscribed to the theatre practice where if you messed up something, even if it's one lousy line, you start all over again, no matter how far along you are. A lot of time was spent on entrances and exits. I could have breathed easily even with that, but some people were still not off book and were messing up their songs or solos. Some people rarely got it right, even late in the run. On the Monday before we opened, we had our sitzprobe without finishing it. Eventually rehearsals began running as late as eleven and even two days before opening, we were still not fully finished blocking.

On our last night before opening, I prayed that we could get a full run in without stopping. But that was too much to hope for. Everything was going fine until we came to "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" and found that Craig had mic problems, so we had to stop to fix that. Then when we got to act two, we found that the trapdoor for Sweeney's victims to slide down out of the barber chair wasn't open, so we had to stop for that. But strangest of all, when we got to the end of it, Carl had disappeared. Just left without warning. I never found out why.

For some reason, Carl had the chorus members and all principal actors except Matt and Tika, wear masks while they were onstage. We all had three to start: A white one for serious or neutral moments, a colorful one (mine was green) for the two upbeat ensemble numbers ("Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" and "God, That's Good"), and a yellowish one with black marks for the asylum scene. Those in the minuet had a masquerade type mask and those who died changed at the end from a white mask to a red one. I did not see the point of the masks since they covered half my face and robbed me of being able to convey emotions while I was singing.



In this photo, you can more clearly see the masks

In this show I finally got an onstage death! Technically I got two, but the moment in "A Little Priest" doesn't count because that was a fantasy sequence. I got to be one of the people whose throat gets slashed by Sweeney Todd and then dropped down the trap door out of the chair. That was awesome! We had to have a fight call before every show for those who went down it, which was me, George, Bobby, Kelly, and Garet. Kelly was always a little nervous when it was her turn. Me? I couldn't wait.



Moment before death

Going down the slide after death



Opening night wasn't a complete disaster, but there was still some flubbing on lines and singing. I estimate that there were around 50-60 people in attendance. Some of the music wasn't right either. At one point in "A Little Priest," where the music is supposed to stop, Lucas must have had a brain fart because he didn't stop. The second night was a bit better, but four mics of the leading characters went out. First it was Bobby's, then Troy's, then Craig and in the beginning of the second act, Matt's.

Sunday had a small, but responsive audience. I think there may have been twenty or so, but it looked so empty in the cavernous theater. The heat was at about 100 degrees that day, so my guess is that people went to the river or maybe just decided not to leave the house in that weather. I was miserable because I had a splitting headache (maybe a migraine), and the weather wasn't helping it. I was so hot I left my jacket off during "Priest," and then I remembered that my mic wire was showing because I had to wear it outside in front because of the slide. I spent the whole number attempting to hide it and when I died, I tried to fall in a way no one would see it. On Sunday's we had a talk back with the audience, but on this particular day, I just wanted to get out of there and take a nice cool shower. Not that it helped. I could still feel a slight dull pain in my head where it was the next day.

The dance in "Priest" was staged to have one person from each couple die before the other one. During rehearsals, with learning it being frustrating, we all begged to die early. At first, we thought it would change every night, but eventually, from what I could see, Matt went in the same pattern, killing the same person in each couple every time. Ariana was always the first to die before everyone. When I asked her what she'd do if Matt pulled a fast one on her and killed her partner first, she responded that she's cry and panic. 

I was partnered with Kimmy, who was promoted to dance captain during rehearsals. I always died first, and I was killed at the moment when Tika said "Bulter," and Matt replied "Subtler." Matt, ever the eternal and diehard Batman fan, said he was going to start calling me Alfred. When I asked him "But which actor?" he thought a moment and he decided that he really liked the latest actor to portray Alfred, Jeremy Irons. I told Matt he could cut Kimmy a break and let her die first, but since she was the dance captain, the cast asked that she stay alive so they could follow her.



During "A Little Priest"



Every night during that number, I was terrified while I lay there on the floor. I was afraid that Matt or Tika would accidentally step on me. I tried to die so I'd be out of the way and also be as comfortable as I could. Some nights when Kimmy died, she landed on top of me, but that didn't bother me. I always knew when that was coming so I could brace for it. If she had died first, I could have died in a more dramatic way, and it wouldn't have mattered if it was uncomfortable because I wouldn't have been there long. Whenever she apologized if she felt her falls were hurting me and if I was okay, I told her not to worry and that I was more afraid of being stepped on than of her falling on me.



End of "Priest"



On the first night of the second weekend, we had a big and responsive audience. The second night's audience was about a third the size of the night before and quiet. The third night had the same size as the second night. The Sunday show had a large audience, and it was a much better experience than the first Sunday with the weather being less brutal.

On the last weekend we had an audience of about sixty on the first night and one hundred on the other two. The second night in particular had a very responsive audience, probably the best one yet. However, that night had its share of problems. The mic problems continued; Emily had the worst of it because hers was not working at all the entire night. Tika's mic slipped out of its pack and caused her to stay still during her song, "Wait." There were also line flubs and missed entrances which made the first act rather shaky.

We had two reviews of the show. While both praised Lucas Sherman's music direction and the orchestra, they were less kind toward the staging and the performances. The praise or criticism toward the main characters depended on the review, one liking certain people and the other disliking them. They were both unanimous in that the staging was stiff. Thank goodness it wasn't just me thinking it.

On the final day some people were crying or almost crying because it was all over, but I wasn't one of them. I hardly had time to be sad because the next day I was going down to Disneyland!