If you've always wanted to see Sweeney Todd, you probably have. Several times. But TheatreWorks makes a strong case for another shave and a haircut at the hands of the demon barber of Fleet Street. And for the curious who have somehow missed seeing this masterful musical on stage, the case for a visit to Mountain View becomes closer to compelling.
This production comes with a concept that resets the action from the gritty London in the throes of the Industrial Revolution to WWII London during the Blitz. But that's more ostensible than actual, for what director Robert Kelley posits in a singular interpolated line �" "We can do this show down here" �" is that a theatrical troupe made stageless by the bombings has set up shop in an Underground station doubling as a bomb shelter. In other words, the story being told still takes place in the Victorian era even if props, scenery, and costumes are improvised by what the 1940s actors have to work with.
It doesn't make much difference that Mrs. Lovett wears a snood and peep-toe shoes in Fumiko Bielefeldt's mix-and-match costumes, and Andrea Bechert's imposing tube-station set could haveas easily been in service in 1900 as in 1940. But the mighty bones of composer Stephen Sondheim's and librettist Hugh Wheeler's collaboration still find dark and treacherous life in Kelley's smart, steady, and somewhat tempered staging that suggests rather than illustrates the bloody doings.
The cast is uniformly in sync with the penny-dreadful spirit of the piece, and the leading players each have their own way to bring something special to the proceedings. As the vengeful Sweeney Todd, who lost his wife and daughter after being wrongly imprisoned, David Studwell creates an imposing character, and his voice has booming intensity. As his accomplice in murder and meat pies, Tory Ross makes Mrs. Lovett more of a naturalistic character than a grotesquerie, and this helps make more plausibly moving Spencer Kiely's mother fixation in his role of the simple assistant Tobias. Jack Mosbacher exudes purity as noble seaman Anthony, while Mindy Lynn is properly angelic as his beloved Joanne. Lee Strawn's Judge Turpin is effective without exuding the typical oleaginousness, and Martin Rojas Dietrich plays henchman Beadle Bailey with a fluttery comic demeanor.
Air-raid sirens replace the shrill factory-whistles that are usually used to punctuate scenes, and wartime paraphernalia spreads out from the stage into the lobby. The sounds and glow of bombs dropping outside the shelter help accentuate the musical's final descent into murderous mayhem, but we are never really displaced from the original milieu of Sweeney Todd. Nor should we be.
Sweeney Todd will run through Nov. 2 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $19-$74. Call (650) 463-1960 or go to theatreworks.org.