William Mathias / Sweeney Todd

On this day in classical music: Welsh composer William Mathias was born in 1934. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Lennox Berkeley. Mathias was professor of music at the University of Wales from 1970 until 1988. He founded the North Wales International Music Festival in St. Asaph in 1972 and directed it until his death in 1992. Among Mathias’ best known works is the anthem “Let the People Praise Thee, O God,” a 1981 work composed for the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Listen to the St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir perform the popular anthem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h47GMYnd_Cw

On this day in the musical theatre: A revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” opened on Broadway in 2005. The success of John Doyle’s London production prompted a transfer to Broadway with a new cast that featured Patti LuPone as Mrs. Lovett and Michael Cerveris as Sweeney Todd. Doyle’s approach with this revival was to hire actors who could also play musical instruments. When an actor wasn’t involved in a scene, he or she would join others to create an onstage instrumental ensemble. LuPone played tuba (!!) and percussion and Cerveris the guitar. It proved to be a one-trick ploy that audiences quickly tired of. My impression of this version was that the actors never became fully invested in their roles because of the musical demands of performing music when they weren’t in a scene — an opinion not shared by New York Times drama critic Ben Brantley. See below. Nevertheless, the production ran for nearly a year and won Tony Awards for best direction and orchestrations. Listen to the cast of the 2005 revival perform a medley from the popular musical. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7UOTuntLMk

Musical musings: Surely no previous production of “Sweeney Todd” has had such a high quotient of truly unsettling horror or such a low quotient of conventional stage spectacle. Mr. Doyle, conditioned by the economic limitations of long years in regional theater, delivers what is, on one level, a skeletal “Sweeney.” This production features one set, 10 actors (excellent) and 10 musicians (also excellent). The actors and musicians, by the way, are the same people. Yet this concentration of resources only tightens both narrative pull and emotional focus. The original Broadway “Sweeney,” directed by Harold Prince, was a big-picture masterpiece that placed the show’s luridness in a distancing Dickensian social framework. Mr. Doyle’s version, by contrast, draws you claustrophobically close. As they say at the entrance to spook houses, enter if you dare. The narrative reads remarkably clearly for a show without changes of scenery to map the plot’s itinerary. Still, those unfamiliar with “Sweeney” may want to skim a synopsis in preparation. And a few of the visual tropes, like a white coffin Sweeney lugs around in the second act, can be irritatingly arty and confusing. But the big visual scare tactics, which involve little more than red light and buckets of stage blood, are more effective than the grisliest cinematic splatter scenes. – Ben Brantley in The New York Times

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