‘Sweeney Todd’ assessment: Josh Groban is a delicate demon on Broadway

Our eyes don’t usually nicely up with tears throughout “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Road,” Stephen Sondheim’s horror-musical during which throats are gruesomely slashed and cannibalism is positively hilarious. 

However minutes into the brand new Broadway revival starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford that opened Sunday night time on the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, I used to be already verklempt.

Such is the overwhelming expertise of listening to Sondheim’s superb 1979 rating in all its splendor performed by a 26-person orchestra — not in some cavernous live performance corridor or opera home, however an actual Broadway theater. It’s been some time.

Director John Doyle’s 2005 small-scale actor-musician manufacturing with Patti LuPone and the 2017 immersive off-Broadway staging at Barrow Road Theatre had been in another way great, however director Thomas Kail’s revival packs an unmatched orchestral punch.

That well-known first lyric, “Attend the story of Sweeney Todd,” isn’t a lot a suggestion this time, however a full-throated command.

So, off we go along with Groban as Sweeney, a Victorian-era London barber who’s wrongfully imprisoned by the lecherous choose who covets Todd’s spouse, Lucy. Being locked up in faraway Australia turns him right into a monster, hellbent on killing Decide Turpin (Jamie Jackson) and Turpin’s smarmy sidekick, the Beadle (John Rapson), again in England. He will get to London, and issues flip bloody bloody.

Instantly we notice that Groban will not be the menacing, feral Todd that Len Cariou and Michael Cerveris had been, however a calmer chap with an ax to grind. This alternative cuts each methods. Sweeney is extra human, sure, however some scenes lack depth. His tune “Epiphany” — during which he declares, “All of them should die!” — isn’t as scary accurately. Nonetheless, Groban is as well-sung a Sweeney as you’ll discover.

Recent off the boat, the barbaric barber heads to Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Store on Fleet Road, the place he’s served the worst pies in London and we’re served Ashford’s nonstop hilarity.

Ashford is a remarkably gifted comedienne. Nonetheless, there’s extra to her Lovett than schtick. With trendy aptitude, she conjures reminiscences of the very actual girls who’ve befriended serial killers like Ted Bundy or Charles Manson to seek out objective or love.

She’s wildly humorous: Her “By The Sea,” during which Mrs. Lovett imagines retiring to the coast along with her assassin man-friend, is jammed with extra jokes than we knew may match. But she’s unhappy too — achingly determined to have someone by her aspect.

Sweeney and his eccentric former landlady crew up — he desires revenge, she desires him — and embark on a bloody rampage by London. 

However tips on how to cowl their tracks? Mrs. Lovett’s store is struggling and she will be able to’t afford high-quality meat (Yikes, “Sweeney Todd” could possibly be set in 2023 NYC), so she hatches the maniacal plan to make use of the our bodies of Sweeney’s victims to fill her pastries.

Throughout one of many best Act One finales ever composed, “A Little Priest,” Ashford’s and Groban’s conspirators attempt to crack one another up like “SNL” actors.  

On their homicide spree, Sweeney and Lovett swim in a sea of misplaced souls. 

Jordan Fisher performs Anthony, a bright-eyed sailor who falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna (Maria Bilbao), who’s trapped by the evil choose. Fisher wins us over with guilelessness, however doesn’t fairly nail the hovering “Johanna.” He’ll get there.

And the way lucky we’re to look at Ruthie Ann Miles take the position of the crazed beggar lady and add incomparable depth and ache to her deranged shouts and cries. 

Gaten Matarazzo from “Stranger Issues” battles one other monster as little Toby, initially assistant to the humorous Italian barber Pirelli (Nicholas Christopher, flawless), turned waiter on the pie store. He’s haunting as he croons “Not Whereas I’m Round” to his beloved Mrs. Lovett. “Sweeney” is the uncommon musical the place an actor having fought Vecna on Netflix truly provides to their efficiency.

Not all is ideal on the pie store, although. What hinders “Hamilton” director Kail’s typical however on no account blasé manufacturing is Steven Hoggett’s largely pointless choreography. 

Hoggett has achieved good work in previous exhibits reminiscent of “As soon as” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Little one,” during which motion sprung up in an natural, magical approach. 

However in “Sweeney Todd,” the dancing and gestures he’s staged are overabundant and clumsy, stealing our consideration away from Sondheim’s peerless lyrics and stress-free the should-be-tense songs. Stillness is far more scary than actors spastically chopping the air with their palms.

And there are occasions when it looks as if Kail simply didn’t like a tune very a lot, so he tacked on an interpretive dance upstage on Mimi Lien’s bridge-and-tunnel set to maneuver it alongside.

Regardless, all it takes is a swell of the orchestra and the hellfire wails of the refrain to joltingly remind us we’re at one of many best musicals ever written.