By Isabelle Mercado and Hannah Bernstein
Walking into The Barrow Theatre was like getting transported to a cute little bakery in London. Isabelle and I sat at a communal dinner table and were greeted with the delicious smell of savory pies. She had the meat pie (though it’s unclear what kind of meat she was served) and I got a veggie pie. After devouring the absolutely scrumptious pies, the actors sat at the foot of the tables and we discussed where they went to college, how long they’d been performing, and the actors asked us where we were from and whether we’d seen Sweeney Todd before.
Soon the lights dimmed and the actors transformed into their 19th century characters, making intense eye contact with the audience and banging on the tables with forks and knives. Since the musical constantly engaged the audience there was never a dull moment. The actors flirted with the viewers, chose a woman to shave and held a pair of scissors up to my hair. Even though the play was incredibly long, two hours and 40 minutes including a fifteen minute intermission, the audience was continuously sucked into the plot and the music.
The actors were all fantastic. The most memorable ones were the hilarious–Carolee Carmello as Mrs. Lovett and the majorly talented Michael James Leslie as Judge Turpin. Carmello by far garnered the most laughs with her unrequited love for Sweeny and for her brilliant pie idea. Judge Turpin’s solo, Johanna, was stunningly beautiful despite the disgusting theme.
If you have yet to see the iconic 2007 Tim Burton film version of Sweeney Todd (with Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp) or the less iconic, but also worthwhile 1997 John Schlesinger version, then you might be a little shocked walking in to this performance. Basically, the premise is that there’s this guy who calls himself Sweeney Todd who’s been out of town for a while and now he’s back to get his revenge on this other guy called Judge Turpin who ruined his family. He’s really angry, so he goes and murders a bunch of people while trimming their beards at his barbershop, then sends the bodies down to Mrs. Lovitt where she turns them into meat pies.
Warning: if you don’t want to sort of be attacked by the actors or have fake blood sprayed onto you, then don’t sit in the front!