![\""Sweeney](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770119532_678_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThey don\u2019t make musicals like \u201cSweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street\u201d anymore.<\/p>\n
The ambition on display is awe-inspiring to an almost alarming degree. Consider the lyrical and orchestral complexity of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s score, the way Hugh Wheeler\u2019s book (from an adaptation by Christopher Bond) blends horror and comedy as if the two were natural bedmates and a production concept that views the material of a fiendish penny dreadful through a Brechtian lens. <\/p>\n
Could the American theater ever again pull off such an outrageously brilliant musical experiment? Harold Prince\u2019s 1979 Broadway premiere, starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury, seems like eons ago in terms of creative possibility. <\/p>\n
This is the reason revivals, such as the solid one that opened Saturday at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts under the direction of Jason Alexander, are so important. They remind us not only of the richness of our theatrical past but they also challenge our artists and producers to dream bigger in the future.<\/p>\n
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Will Swenson stars as \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n
(Jason Niedle \/ TETHOS)<\/p>\n
Alexander, the beloved \u201cSeinfeld\u201d star who made his Broadway debut in Sondheim<\/a> and George Furth\u2019s \u201cMerrily We Roll Along\u201d<\/a> in 1981, knows a thing or two about American musicals, having served for a time as the artistic director of L.A.\u2019s bygone Reprise Theatre Company. His direction has grown in sophistication and ease since he staged Sondheim and James Lapine\u2019s \u201cSunday in the Park With George\u201d<\/a> for Reprise in 2007.<\/p>\n Alexander\u2019s production of \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d has breadth and heft, but also intimacy and lightness. The scenic design by Paul Tate dePOO III savors the show\u2019s Grand Guignol flavors while leaving plenty of flexibility for antic comedy. <\/p>\n The barber chair, the locus of Sweeney\u2019s revenge on the heartless cruelty of a Victorian London that wrecked his life, isn\u2019t the elaborate contraption of other productions. His murder victims don\u2019t fall down a chute after their throats are slit during their shave and a haircut. They have to be tilted into a dumpster that is moved into position, but Alexander makes the comic most of these clumsier stage mechanics. <\/p>\n Will Swenson, the accomplished Broadway actor, offers an unusually sympathetic yet never sentimentalized Sweeney. He understands that Sweeney is first and foremost a victim. The lust for vengeance eventually gets the better of him, but Swenson leads us step by step to depravity through sorrow, injustice and humiliation. <\/p>\n Andrew Polec, right, with the company of \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n (Jason Niedle \/ TETHOS)<\/p>\n He\u2019s man-made rather than a natural monster. The same could be said of Lesli Margherita\u2019s Mrs. Lovett, the proprietor of a filthy and failing Fleet Street pie shop, but it\u2019s a shakier case. She\u2019s the one who gets the bright idea of putting all those corpses Sweeney is intent on piling up into culinary use. Meat is in short supply, and the taboo of cannibalism is no deterrent to a woman who has taken to heart the jungle law of 19th-century British society: Eat or be eaten. <\/p>\n Swenson and Margherita are singing marvels, but Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett\u2019s numbers set up Olympian challenges, vocally as well as lyrically. Their comically macabre Act 1 showstopper, \u201cA Little Priest,\u201d in which they gleefully imagine the variety of human pies, needs a little more time in the oven. Margherita, who played Mrs. Wormwood in \u201cMatilda the Musical\u201d on Broadway, is a deft clown. Swenson may be a step slower in this regard, but he plays it perfectly by accentuating the delight Sweeney takes in the merriment of Mrs. Lovett\u2019s perverse rhyming game. <\/p>\n![\""Sweeney](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770119534_782_.jpeg\")
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![\""Sweeney](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770119535_935_.jpeg\")
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