Sweeney Todd: Victorian London and Today’s Homeless Crisis

Playing now at Pasadena’s A Noise Within, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” ties the worst of Victorian-era London to the meanest streets of Los Angeles. Based on a mid-19th century “penny dreadful” serial called “The String of Pearls,” Sweeney Todd was transformed into an award-winning big-time Broadway musical by lyricist and songwriter Stephen Sondheim in 1979. The musical subsequently enjoyed four extended runs on Broadway, won a number of Tony Awards, and has toured the country ever since.

The current revival–graced with a slew of glowing reviews, including one by our compatriot Ed Rampell–draws parallels between the grinding poverty and soaring economic inequality of yesterday’s London to L.A.’s intractable homeless crisis, with its shiny Mercedes Benzes sailing past overflowing tent cities.

Known as a “dark operetta,” Sweeney pulls together a group of homeless people who have taken residence in a disused theatre, where they don period costumes to greet Sweeney Todd himself, an embittered, recently released convict who sets up his barbershop over Mrs. Lovett’s struggling pie shop, keen to exact his revenge on a society that has wronged him.

The erstwhile “barber” takes that vengeance on the city’s wealthy class by first shaving their well-fed faces, then slitting their throats, supplying the bodies to his downstairs neighbor for her meat pies. One bloody story indeed, spiced with a love story or two and more than a dollop of stage blood.

As we’ve found in other visits–”The Bluest Eye” and “Anna in the Tropics,” for example–the A Noise Within theatre is a blessing to behold, always with a superb creative team, as in this weekend’s Sweeney Todd, headed by scenic designer François-Pierre Couture, lighting designer Ken Booth, and sound designer Jeff Gardner.

The cast performances are beyond compare, led by Cassandra Marie Murphy as Mrs. Lovett and Geoff Elliott as Sweeney Todd himself, with nearly every word of the large cast’s performance sung in a soaring, rapid-fire operatic fashion.

For anyone less familiar with the story’s path, it may be hard to follow who’s getting the blade and why and how the inhabitants of the insane asylum that appears later in the performance connect to what’s going on down on Sixth and San Pedro in L.A.’s Skid Row. For the true fan of musicals, of Stephen Sondheim, this Sweeney Todd revival is a marvel in two acts.

Sweeney Todd runs through March 17 at A Noise Within, located at 3352 E Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, California. Sweeney Todd is recommended for ages 14 and up. For more information and to purchase tickets, call 626.356.3100 or go here.