Buckets, fountains, catfuls, neckfuls and bitefuls of red blood have poured out and onto the stages of Broadway and Off Broadway this season.
John Doyle's new, inventive production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Sweeney Todd, a musical thriller, in which actors create their own orchestra as well, led the season off to a deliciously electrifying start.
I do love the haunting score; nothing can compare to it this season. Sweeney is the vengeful Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who with the encouragement of Mrs. Lovett, slices the throats of his clients in his barber chair, while she turns them into meat pies. Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone are startling in the parts of these two grim collaborators. Although there are moments when some of the drama is lost in this interpretation, as a musician, I was bowled over by the gifted cast, who can sing, act, and play instruments, while carrying and pouring buckets of blood all at the same time!
The Lieutenant of Inishmore, an Irish potboiler written by a seemingly gentle playwright, Martin McDonagh, when he was much younger, is one of the funniest and most daring scripts to ever explode on a stage. It began life here in the U.S. Off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater and has now moved to the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. The story of a dead beheaded cat that inspires terror and revenge from its owner, Padraic, played with charming horror by David Wilmot, who is a terrorist for the Irish National liberation Army, is truly unbelievable.
In a shabby cottage, dismembered body parts are cut up by the men and one crazy woman; blood covers all of the walls and floors and saturates the cast. And the hilarious end is truly a surprise!
One thing the Broadway production will not have: at the Atlantic Theater, in order to reach the rest rooms situated behind the stage, the audience had to tread over layers that looked and felt like shale. It lent authenticity to this raucous, down-and-dirty play.
Ghastly! Lestat is a ghastly mess! I've never read an Anne Rice novel, but that does not matter. Any theme can be interesting if handled well in a play. The hero of this piece gets bitten in the neck in the first scene and from then on, it is all down hill. The act gives him everlasting life. Every time he decides to bite someone else, starting with his mother, the sucking of blood is accompanied by red lights and very loud music, overwritten by Elton John. One number sounds like the other. All the characters are unpleasant, particularly a nasty little girl who is dressed in a stiff white dress and blonde hair exactly like Patty, played by Patty McCormack in "The Bad Seed," way back in 1956.
During the course of the evening, Lestat calls out, "God, why did you do this to me?" and "Please release me!" My very thoughts throughout the two and one half hours.
Let's hope next season's theme has something to do with, say apricots, tulips, even sex!
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