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The shadows, via Natasha Katzs lighting, surround your field of vision with a similar luscious miasma.
Think of Dickens writing fog everywhere in the opening ofBleak House.
New York has also seenconcert stagingsandclose-ups Off Broadway.
Hes not presenting social commentary as much as hes enveloping us in a collective nightmare.
His London is full of phantoms slipping in and out of the fog.
Foremost among those phantoms: Josh Grobans Sweeney, who glints but does not gleam in the darkness.
you’re free to feel him trying to summon an inferno behind his eyes.
He gets to a wildfire, not hell itself.
That limitation stands out because Annaleigh Ashford, as Mrs. Lovett, has gone feral.
Shes one of those actors who will happily commit above and beyond whatevers asked.
), and deploying a cloud-cuckooland Cockney that makes England sound like Engelond (Chaucerian!).
In their A Little Priest, as elsewhere, the psychosexual drama ofSweeneytakes the lead.
Their revenge plot is less a righteous up-yours to those above and more a personal crusade.
The thing still feels like a chamber opera even on a stage full of bodies.
Steven Hoggett choreographs the ensemble to swirl like a murmuration of birds, in sync and inhuman.
(He also didThe Cursed Child, which explains why I expected everyone to bring out a wand.)
In the productions most chilling moment, they disappear into it.
You imagine the pair might rematerialize behind you as you wait at a stoplight some night soon.
Nicholas Christopher makes an imposing Pirelli, seemingly a foot taller than everyone else onstage and still a buffoon.
John Rapsons Beadle is so extraordinarily greasy its impossiblenotto wonder how he might look on a bun.
Only Jordan Fishers Anthony and Maria Bilbaos Johanna dont stick as clearly.
Both sound lovely, but loveliness alone isnt enough.
Spare a thought and an alm, however, for the miserable Beggar Woman.
(I feel so much for her lower back.)
Then, thisSweeney, so cloaked in darkness, inverts itself in the blaze of Mrs. Lovetts oven.
Madness gives way to gentleness and tragedy.
The great black pit of the industrial metropolis contains people after all.
