CRITIC’S PICK: “... the ravishingly sung, deeply emotional and strangely hilarious “Sweeney” revival that opened on Sunday at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, and directed by Thomas Kail, it has a rictus on its face and a scar in its heart.”
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“You won’t leave humming the scenery, but that’s fine: The superb score, which melds period genres with modern influences, is the main attraction, and it comes through gorgeously. Powerfully sung and played in Jonathan Tunick’s original orchestrations, Sondheim’s Grand Guignol masterwork sounds as grand here as it deserves to. Dig in.”
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“Subtitled ‘The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,’ the show motors on Sweeney’s monstrous dimensions. Absent that, or even a faint whiff of borderline madness from what he’s been dealt, the production comes off as a bit too tame. Gorgeous music threads throughout this grisly thriller.”
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“Kail...aims to ratchet Sweeney all the way back up, deploying a cast of 25, a two-level set by Mimi Lien with a towering crane—going big and crucially, expressionistic...His London is full of phantoms slipping in and out of the fog. Foremost among those phantoms: Josh Groban’s Sweeney, who glints but does not gleam in the darkness. ”
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“By some mysterious alchemy, ‘Sweeney Todd’ excels at illuminating them all, exploring the best and worst of humanity in one of musical theater’s most thrilling, and chilling, works.”
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"A prodigious theatrical event that aims for greatness and achieves it, this revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler masterpiece is not to be missed."
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“...an indictment of human brutality and a classic Sondheim declaration that to love is to live. All of that wrapped up in a Broadway horror story of murder most tasty. It will be a tough ticket, but the demon barber had it rougher.”
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“Kail’s production has an austere severity that’s suited to serial killings but also makes it feel coolly remote...And there will be audiences who remember hearing the dynamite score of ‘Sweeney Todd’ played by a 26-person orchestra, and sung by as many soaring voices, as a pulse-raising experience on its own, all handsome pageantry aside.”
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