Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!

Stuff Happens

It was mom's 69th birthday today. We celebrated yesterday with a visit to the Royal Alexander theatre to see that David Hare play Stuff Happens. it was a brilliant way to celebrate . . . a great play, followed by dinner back at home.

David Hare's play looks at how the War in Iraq came about. We sat mesmerized as the actors playing George Bush, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld blended historical record and fiction to recreate the drive to war after 9-11. A lot of the dialog is based on actual statements, but Hare added dialogue to suggest what might have been said behind closed doors. 

The play was far more nuanced that other treatments - something by Michael Moore let's say. Nonetheless we were treated to a thoughtful examination of the egotistical, power hungry figures who launched a war through faulty information, carefully planned communications, and diplomatic trickery. They are generally depicted as regular everyday people instead of the untouchable figures we see in the news reels . . . albeit figures which glaring character flaws.

Stuff Happens is a play filled with some of the strongest flawed personalities in recent history. In Toronto, the star is undeniably Nigel Shawn Williams as Colin Powell. Williams gives such an impassioned performance as a man torn between his moral instinct to do “the right thing” and his commitment to respect and dutifully obey the orders from his government. None of the characters emerge unscathed from Hare's critical glare yet Powell comes across as a man trapped - a sentiment Williams plays brilliantly.

The other performances in this production are brilliant. It is a joy to see fifteen Canadian actors striding onto the Royal Alexandra stage at the very top of his/her game. Joel Greenberg directs the play with vivid creativity and the utmost precision. The production is clean, sharp and has all the professionalism of a tightly-run meeting in the boardroom.

It is a gripping play that reminds us once again that the decision to defeat Saddam Hussein and destabilize his country was not rooted in humanitarian efforts or directly linked to the 9-11 attacks. It turns Cheney and Rumsfeld into villains and makes fun of George W. Bush at every opportunity. Some might suggest that  Hare’s play was a little bit *too* one-sided. I'm not sure about that as I thought the play presented alternative viewpoints well and left the audience to arrive at their own conclusions regarding right and wrong.

In the end only advancing time will judge the actions of the historical figures.

The play is in Toronto until December 23rd.
 

Stratford Festival - Westside Story

It seems had to imagine but it was 27 years ago that I saw my first piece of musical theatre. My good friend bought me a ticket to Evita for my 18th birthday. We got dolled up, grabbed the train into the city, had a brilliant dinner, and enjoyed the show. I've been hooked ever since.

Until last week I had never seen West Side Story performed on stage. To be honest I don't think I have seen the movie either.

I'm sure that the rest of you know the story well though . . . a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Takes place in New York in the 1950’s, and there are these two gangs: the Sharks (the Puerto Ricans) and the Jets (those who considered themselves “true Americans”). They’re fighting over a bit of land, when Tony (one of the Jets) and Maria (the brother of the head of the Sharks) fall in love. Cue soap opera storyline . . . star-crossed lovers, death, murder, tears and lots of singing, incredible dancing.

Guess what. This performance was so flawless and loving that it really was the best piece of live theatre I've seen in 27 years. AMAZING

Paul Nolan plays Tony and manages to hit the high notes. He hits the soft ones. He solos and harmonizes. He owns the stage with surprising athletic prowess. Ever look around you at a play? Ever notice the women passing around Kleenex and crying after a moving solo? No? Then go see this West Side Story.

The play is more than just Tony. Chilina Kennedy (previously at the Shaw festival) as Maria has a sweet and full voice. Her voice blends perfectly with Nolan’s in One Hand, One Heart. Her acting captures the innocence of a young girl in love for the first time. When needed, she was able to summon the anger and protectiveness over Tony’s dead body at the end of the play with convincing emotion.

The ensemble pieces and dancing are the third part of the four necessary elements for a great West Side. They nailed it here. In particular, the PR’s doing the Everything’s Great in America and the Officer Krupke bit were near perfect. The dancing was frenetic and beautiful. Just the high energy action one should expect from Jerome Robbins' original choreography which is literally built into the contract. 

Anita, Bernardo’s girl also deserves mention. Anita must be able to act. She must be the anchor for Maria. She needs to be alternately a smart-ass and loving. Forgiving and vulnerable. She really needs to be able to sing and dance too. She needs it all. Jennifer Rias as Anita was perfect. We walked out feeling she could have stolen the show if she wanted. Awesome casting.

Summation? A stunning production. At  the close at least 1/3 of the women around me were openly crying. Quite a few guys were sniffling. Me? I’m not admitting to anything.

Everyone leaving the show was buzzing about what they had just seen. It is no wonder that a number of theatre reviewers from NY declared this to be one of the finest productions of West Side Story - EVER!

Spring Awakening

I debated in my mind about this post - it seemed silly given that the play had left Toronto the day after we saw it. However, I note that the tour heads to Boston, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, and Chicago over the next four months so I thought 'what the heck'. Besides - it was quite the play.

First up - this isn't your grandmother's musical. There are no cheerful choral songs sung in the South Pacific, kings falling in love with the school marm or seven brothers falling for seven sisters. This is a hard hitting, in-your-face slice of reality.

I can only imagine what the response must have been with the producers first pitched the idea . . . 'I'd like to take a obscure German play set in the 1890s. There are a lot of social 'taboos' in the play. Abortion, rape, teenage sexuality, masturbation, homosexuality, religion, generational strife, education, nudity, child abuse, death, suicide, crime . . . Oh . . . did I say I'd like to make it a musical?'

Improbably this musical hit Broadway in 2006 to overwhelming acclaim and cleaned up at the Tony awards the next year, winning 11.

Happily we knew what to expect so we weren't shock by it . . . too much! LOL

This is a brilliant show that has you on the edge of your seats. Spring Awakening, based on a play by Frank Wedekind, was so unlike anything else I'd seen that previously. It was just thrilling to watch. I loved the rock 'n' roll score by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater. The characters and story were memorable, I know I wasn't alone as many in the audience were moved to tears. I left the theatre feeling drained and exhilarated.

As the story unfolds one comes to appreciate the challenges faced by Melchior, Moritz and Wendla. Throughout the musical, these teenagers and their classmates explore their sexuality and face pressures both at home and at school in brilliant but brutal reality.

In a compelling story where nothing goes right for the characters, this is a musical staging where few things goes wrong. Sharp vocals combined with stunning choreography gives the production vast audience appeal. All of which takes place on an exquisitely minimalistic set design draped with a rock concert style lighting strategy.

Altogether, Spring Awakening is a refreshing piece of musical theatre for our time. Perhaps, like the characters in which it portrays, it's finally coming of age.

This sanitized clip from the Tony Awards gives you a sense of the heard hitting energy of the show:

What did Paul think? His first comment was 'I'd like to see it again!"

Sadly, by the time we were home the touring cast had started packing up for the next stop on the tour!

The Colour Purple

Last Saturday our theatre group went to see the touring production of the Colour Purple. Playing at the Canon theatre in Toronto, the show runs until March 15th. It was a great evening of theatre - one of the best that we have experienced on the Toronto stage in some time.

In 1983, Alice Walker's novel took home a Pulitzer Prize.Then, in 1985, Steven Spielberg, with the help of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah, turned it into an Academy Award Nominated film (although it failed to bring home a single Oscar). In 2005, the show was turned into a Broadway show to great acclaim, playing to sellout performances for over two years and scoring 11 Tony nominations in the process.

I must have been one of the few odd souls in the audience who had never read the book nor seen the movie. It was wonderful to not have a constant comparison happening in my mind while I watched the show.

The story is a tale of strife and triumph in the American south during early part of the 20th century as it follows the crushing lows and eventual highs of Celie a poor black girl. Celie overcomes a childhood of abuse and horror to experience happiness in her adult years. Her journey, while harrowing to watch (and reflect upon) is inspiring.

There are several touching moments in this adaptation such as when Celie discovers love through the kindness of Shug who befriends her and Celie's unswerving belief in her sister's existence.  Much needed comic relief (this is a HEAVY story line)is delivered by the three gossiping church ladies (Kimberly Ann Harris, Virginia Ann Woodruff and Lynette DuPree) who mingle throughout scenes. The dance numbers are compatible with the material and never overwhelm the seriousness of the plot. 

The production sets are uncomplicated and neither add or take away from the show's overall theme. The score, while not the most memorable, is well delivered by the cast (including a former finalist from American Idol).

Sofia is there in all her feisty, freewheeling glory, played with unabashed enthusiasm by the awesome Felicia P. Fields, with Stu James making a sweet counterpart as her on-again, off-again husband, Harpo. The audience adored her and responded with joy at her antics.

That epitome of sex and charm, Shug Avery, dazzled on every level in the electric work of Angela Robinson. Shug's Act I duet with Celie, "What About Love?", counts as one of the show's emotional highlights.

There's also amazing work from Rufus Bonds Jr. who turns the misogynistic Mister from a potentially hateful caricature to a fully complex creation capable of genuine redemption. His redemption is real and powerful - a man who was the product of his upbringing, unable to bend to the changing times until it was almost too late. His portrayal of an abusive husband was so vivid that the audience seemed to struggle with the notion of forgiving - even after the subject of his abuse on stage had.

But none of this would work at all if there wasn't an amazing actor playing Celie and this production has one in Kenita R. Miller. It's hard to figure out which aspect of her work to praise first. She ages 40 years over the course of the evening with total conviction and makes us believe equally in her gawky childhood and her radiant middle-aged self. Celie has to deal with a variety of losses – sister, children, lover, friends – and Miller makes every one trigger a different kind of pain.

There you have it - a powerful evening of theatre. If you are in the Toronto area and have some time over the next two weekends do see this show. If the traveling production comes to your city be sure to see it, you won't regret it.

Medea

On Saturday Paul and I went to the next show in our theatre subscription - Medea. Originally the tickets were for next week but we will be in California so an exchange of dates was in order. The rest of our group will be enjoying the play while we are carousing at the house party in Paso Robles.

There is no doubt that they will enjoy this play - even though the story is one of the 'heaviest' that we have seen for some time. When love becomes hate... Euripides' great drama of romantic obsession tells the tale of the princess Medea. For the love of Jason, an ambitious adventurer, she has betrayed her father and her people and gone into lonely exile in an alien land. Now, casually dismissed by the man for whose love she has given all she has, she plans a terrible revenge.

In fact, if this were a film it would be one that I would never see. A slasher flick that appeals to the strong-of-heart teen set. Yet, as a play the same story, while intense, is brilliantly acted making for a stellar evening at the theatre.

Seana McKenna's Medea is a performance to treasure, made up of equal parts fire and music. She plays the driven woman with the resonance needed to fill the role and – uniquely – the deep vein of black humour lurking in this woman's soul. In fact, there were times when I thought that the humour rose to the surface too often - this isn't a play at which there should be laughter! A small flaw in an otherwise brilliant performance.

Medea is terrifying and yet electrifying. One always wonders at the hubris of Jason who dared spurn such a powerful sorceress. The set was minimalist but very effective. There were more pyrotechnics used than I thought they needed. Overall this was well worth seeing. It will playing at the Canon theater in Toronto for about another month.

Theatre Review: the Sound of Music

Our 'group' went to the first show of our subscription season on Saturday - the North American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber's staging of the Sound of Music. Many in the group loved the movie, knew all of the songs, and had been looking forward to this night for months. Not Paul and I - Paul has never seen the movie and I had seen it once - at a campy sing-a-long Sound of Music show that my work colleagues dragged me to years ago. The audience at that event was replete with nuns, bags of stings, Nazi's, Elsa's, kittens, and packages wrapped in brown paper. No wonder I was dreading the play.

This production has a number of things working against it: so many folks remember the Julie Andrews movie version that it would surely overshadow any theatrical production; it was produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber (enough said there); it featuresa large number of child actors; there was a huge pre-production reality show allowing Canadians to select the lead actress to play Maria; and many of the songs and much of the dialog is rather dated. However, all of this proved to be a minor distraction - if it was even an issue at all.

This may be the most popular and most-performed of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals, but from the time of its Broadway premiere nearly half a century ago, it has been vulnerable to charges of excessive, saccharine sentimentality. In fact, the reviews of that first show were devastating. Often these negative reviews were warranted because of the excessive sweetness that flowed forth from the stage. Luckily the Toronto staging avoid as much of this as was possibly yet still followed the story.

The tone is set immediately in the plain song opening with its chanting procession of nuns and spare but compelling spiritual imagery - and then, in striking contrast, a magical suspended oval which frames the figure of Maria coming to life in her beloved Austrian mountains and breaking into song.

The staging was stunning. In this production, for example, the hills really are alive in their own uniquely theatrical way. So are the abbey walls, reaching mysteriously up to the heavens, and the swirling mists which engulf the Trapp family as they begin their historic 1938 flight across the mountains from the invading Nazis.

Rarely in a production of The Sound of Music have the stakes seemed as high as they do here, thanks to a thrillingly executed climax which sees the banners of the Third Reich encircle the theatre auditorium, with a huge one flying over the heads of the audience, while Maria, the Captain and the children execute their cunning escape during a performance at the Salzburg Festival. This has the effect of making you feel as if you are there with the Van Trapps. The result was brilliant, but decidedly scary as well.

The show's success is in the manner in which embraces the two polarities of the play often used to mock it: nuns and Nazis. The chanting black-robed women who fill the theater in the sweepingly liturgical opening stand in stark contrast to the gun-toting Nazis who suddenly spring up in the penultimate scene. Rather than seeming corny, these bold strokes put the good-vs.-evil struggle that the original creative team believed in so vividly at center stage, while anchoring the plot’s more potentially syrupy elements

Canadians chose Elicia MacKenzie to play the role of Maria in the popular reality show this summer. Apparently they might have been right (he says grudgingly) as MacKenzie makes a charming Maria -- fresh, endearing, full-voiced and only occasionally betraying the fact this is her first professional engagement.

The rest of the cast acquit themselves excellently and help give the show a welcome dramatic heft. Particularly strong are Burke Moses(Captain Von Trapp) and Blythe Wilson, the Stratford Festival star of numerous musicals who plays the baroness with wit and charm. Megan Nuttall makes a lovely Liesl and her counterpart, Rolf, is given a nice edge by Shaw Festival vet Jeff Irving. Quebecois opera star Noella Huet, makes a warmly knowing Mother Abbess; her full-out rendition of “Climb Every Mountain” is the show’s vocal highlight - bringing thunderous applause from the audience.

This is an evening of enjoyable theatre; a well directed play, stunning sets, actors with skill who hit their marks. if you're in the Toronto area do try and seek out tickets - you won't be disappointed!

Nicholas Nickleby - Part 1

In 1980, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Nicholas Nickleby became a theatrical legend. Now the Chichester Festival production, the first since the original, looks set to do the same. It is simply the grandest, most exciting theatrical experience you are likely to have all year.

Eye Weekly

David Edgar’s original version of Charles Dickens’s 1839 novel was in two parts and ran to a total of eight and a half hours. Edgar later revised the play for Chichester and Part 1 now runs three hours and Part 2 three and a half - this is the version which took London's West End by storm. Slowly this triumph made its way across the pond where the only North American showing of this same production is in Toronto until April 20th.

We had tickets to see part one of Nicholas Nickleby on Saturday. Because of the wonderful reviews we had read there was no way were about to miss the first part of the play due to a minor trifle AKA 'the worst snowstorm on record for the month of March'.

The production involves 27 actors and 5 musicians who play more than 150 unforgettable roles in a comic masterpiece, presented across the two separate plays. We see part two on March 29th. Some folk have the two plays scheduled for the same day - I for one don't think I could digest 7 hours of theatre in one day. 

During the first part we met such characters as only Charles Dickens could create: Nicholas, defiant of those who wrong the people he loves; wicked Uncle Ralph, who cares for nothing but money; Wackford Squeers, the cruel master of Dotheboys Hall; the poor, abused Smike - and many others you won't soon forget.

The story contains the typical Dickensian themes as goodness and virtue battle cruelty and avarice in a funny, moving, exhilarating saga of Victorian England. The cast does a superb job of balancing the story that sometimes veers from farcical comedy all the way to deep and dark drama.

The production has gotten raves in Toronto and back in England (even Toronto's alternative paper Now gave it 4/5! Which is saying something! They hate everything commercial.)

The story concerns Mrs. Nickleby (Abigail McKern) and her two children Nicholas (Daniel Weyman) and Kate (Hannah Yelland). Left destitute after the death of their father, the siblings fall under the control of their hardhearted uncle Ralph Nickleby (David Yelland), who separates the two.

In Part I, we follow Nicholas through various careers as schoolteacher, under the sadistic Mr. Squeers (Pip Donaghy), and actor, in the company of the ebullient Vincent Crummles (Jonathan Coy), climaxing in the most uproarious performance of Romeo and Juliet you’ll ever see.

The directors Jonathan Church and Philip Franks have created a great whirling epic with swift-moving sequences sped along by characters who often narrate their episodes before entering a scene. This staccato style can be challenging to follow at first but greatly moves an expansive story along to crescendo.

As Edgar emphasizes in the story, this is a dark world controlled by money and power, but one in which the virtuous and powerless can still hope to create a just society that takes as it duty the protection of its least fortunate members. The parallels to our 'modern' society are strong and just as real as they were in 1839.

Twelve Angry Men

Last night Mom, Paul, Ruth, Catherine, Diamond, and I (AKA the theatre group) went to see the next play in our subscription series . . . Twelve Angry Men. I had not seen the movie nor read the book so I was in for quite a treat.

For those of you not familiar with the story . . . what seems like an open-and-shut murder case becomes a twisted puzzle of prejudice and intrigue. Twelve jurors are corralled in a room for their deliberations in the trial of a young man awaiting a manslaughter sentence for the murder of his father.

As prejudices are tested and evidence weighed, the entire jury is forced to look past the show of the courtroom to unearth the shocking truth. Faced with playing the hangmen, these dozen men must first face themselves.

It's really been far too long since we've seen a good old-fashioned, well-made play that's packed with interesting characters, spirited dialog and high dramatic tension, but also has some serious moral points to make. The play races from drama to drama with no intermission; in fact, it was probably the quickest 90 minutes I have ever spent in a theatre.

Reginald Rose's 1954 teleplay about a dozen jurors trying to decide the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murdering his father has been remade many times over the years, but when you see it given the Rolls Royce treatment, you appreciate what a skilled piece of work it is. When the jurors walk into the room, they are 11 to one in favour of conviction. Only a soft-spoken architect (Richard Thomas) pauses and starts asking questions. Before too long, the tide begins to turn and what was a foregone conclusion is now a nail-biting suspense drama.

But Rose is smart enough to give us more than that. A whole society is on trial here, accused of bigotry, small-mindedness and self-obsession. What's frightening about the script is that – with very few alterations – it could still take place in most North American cities today. It's obvious that the young man on trial and his murdered father are both members of a minority group, but Rose cannily never reveals which one. Back in 1954, the venom could have been directed at blacks or Puerto Ricans. Today, the objects of hatred could be as a wide as the world we live in.

There's no room, to single out all of the 12 jurors by name, but believe me when I tell you that they were all doing an excellent job. Thomas commands attention, not just because of his star status, but due to the fact that he's mastered the fine art of underplaying with strong conviction. As an unassuming architect who suddenly turns a jury's mind around, Thomas uses intelligence, charm and moral commitment as his very effective weapons.

Julian Gamble and Kevin Dobson carry the brunt of the play's anger and bigotry, with Dobson delivering one of the most spine-chillingly racist speeches you've ever heard on a stage. Gamble may seem to bluster a bit too much at first, but he has a final scene that is suddenly and unexpectedly moving, and it makes up for his earlier excess.

Alan Mandell and David Lively are both witty, yet touching, as a pair of elderly men who prove themselves far younger in heart and mind than many of their colleagues, and Jeffrey Hayenga is a pleasure to watch as a stockbroker who seems to have ice water in his veins until it really matters.

And through it all, director Ellis shapes the material with a flawless touch, blending reality and artifice with a deft hand.

Twelve Angry Men is the kind of play they don't write any more and that's a pity.

It's engaging, entertaining and enlightening all at once: a triple-crown you don't encounter very often.

And it was the first must-see of 2008.

Dirty Dancing

a gratuitous self-promotion . . .

One of our photos from Italy has been entered in a photo contest.

Our photo is currently number 14 out of 464 photos.

You can vote by clicking here

Remember a 10 is good!

Feel free to e-mail the link to friends and loved ones!

*smile*

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When "Dirty Dancing" movie hit the theatres in 1987, it became a surprise smash hit, thanks largely to the white-hot chemistry between Patrick Swayze as brooding dance instructor Johnny Castle and Jennifer Grey as Frances (Baby) Houseman, the idealistic summer vacationer who falls in love with him. It seems impossible to comprehend but it was 20 years ago that the movie caused couples to try their dirty dancing moves on the dance floor. Hopes were riding high for the North American premiere of the musical currently playing in Toronto.

The show, which had its humble beginnings in Australia in 2004 and later became a smash hit in London, launched its first North American production at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre on Nov. 16. Producers were evidently riding on expectations that the massive popularity of the film would fuel ticket sales regardless of the production’s quality. And now, as the Toronto show is now selling well through August 2008, they’ve already been proven right.

The reviews have been  mixed. We went to the theatre last night with open minds. But even with a slick set design, talented ensemble and what would seem to be a foolproof plot designed to tug tightly on North American heartstrings, “Dirty Dancing” cannot decide whether it is a film or a musical. In the end, it turns out to be neither.

But first, the good news. Leads Monica West as the painfully naive Baby and Jake Simons as the hot-blooded rebel Johnny Castle are fine dancers, and very easy on the eyes at that. A couple of amazing vocal soloists can be found in 2005 “Canadian Idol” winner Melissa O’Neill and Ryan Gifford. And despite everything its creators have done to drag things down, it remains impossible not to squeeze some enjoyment out of the musical’s 50- plus songs.

Most everything that made the film so much fun is preserved, including its hokey dialogue, its quintessentially ’80s low-rent music montages and its awfully contrived story line. Unfortunately, the steamy connection that made the movie such a success is conspicuously absent in the stage show. 

The movie's unforgettable songs are also here, including "She's Like the Wind" (the film version was sung by Swayze), the memorable end-of-summer "Kellerman's Anthem," and the Oscar-winning "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," performed deftly in the Toronto stage show by "Canadian Idol" winner Melissa O'Neil. 

Much of the film's appeal was in the highly suggestive dance moves, and there's plenty of shimmying in the Toronto show, including standout moves by Milwaukee-born Britta Lazenga as Penny, the summer instructor whose accidental pregnancy forces Baby to become Johnny's dance partner in the first place.   

At the end of the first half both mom and I looked at one another, we both were having a difficult time caring about any of the characters on the stage. The rest of the group pooh poohed us and suggested that perhaps we were just too curmudgeon-like to enjoy such a show. Hmmmmmm

Now to be fair, the second act was far better and in the end I did feel a tug when Johnny struted on the stage and had the famous 'last dance of the season' with Frances. Dirty Dancing fans are a pretty rabid bunch. Many of them will likely have the time of their lives revisiting the classic tale on-stage.

Sweeney Todd

a shameless self-promotion . . .

One of our photos from Italy has been entered in a photo contest.

Our photo is currently number 15 out of 463 photos.

You can vote by clicking here

Remember a 10 is good!

Feel free to e-mail the link to friends and loved ones!

*smile*

---

Last night was the first show in our theatre subscrition series. It was odd that the first play was at the end of November. In the past the shows were far more spread out. Oh well, I guess that they wanted to really build up to a big show - and they did!

SWEENEY TODD, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is considered one of the great musicals of all times (some people consider it the greatest). The 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical, which plays at the Princess of Wales Theatre until December 9th, is based on an urban legend from Victorian London about a vengeful barber who kills his clients and serves them up as meat pies in his next door neighbour Mrs. Lovett's pie shop.Written by Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, it is a musical that isn't easy to stage.

I confess to being quite curious about how they would handle the story. Musicals are normally light and frothy things, so how does a show about a mass murderer and cannibalism play out on the stage? I had also heard about how when the show premiered back in /79 the special effects were exuberant and folks were splattered with the fake blood gushing from the victims necks after Sweeney had dispatched them to another place with his straight razor. Yuck

But by re-imagining the masterwork in a revolutionary way, British director John Doyle has found the key to making the musical come to life. By having each of the actors in his production also perform a musical instrument, Doyle has given the legendary tale of 19th century London barber out to seek bloody revenge a new thrilling dimension. The chamber-like production allows audiences to become acutely conscious of every note and sound, whether bowed from a single cello or chimed from a triangle.

This production was the toast of the 2005-06 Broadway season, winning unanimous raves from the critics, many major awards (including a Tony for best director of a musical and a Drama Desk for best musical revival) and nightly standing ovations. I can see why - the staging and actor was outstanding; spare, focused, yet nuanced.

I did a quick YouTube search and found this clip from the original Broadway show:

While the words remained the same the rest of the show was completely different! In fact, you wouldn't really recognize it as the same show.

And . . . just in time for the festive season is a film adaptation of Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, and Helen Boham Carter in a movie by Tim Burton.

Next up in two weeks: Dirty dancing.