In February 2025, The Holy Cross Department of Theatre and Dance unveiled a most audacious artistic achievement, crafting a haunting and enthralling tale of revenge and obsession.<\/p>\n
On the subject of obsession, I attended seven out of the eight times that Holy Cross performed Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street<\/em>. In other words, I spent around twenty-one hours absorbing everything I could from the college\u2019s triumphant musical production. Director Meaghan Deiter infuses nuance, professionalism, and unique ideas that upend restrictive conventions of past iterations to produce a singular piece of art within the broader history of Holy Cross theater.<\/p>\n Sweeney Todd<\/em> is the story of a barber named Benjamin Barker who returns to London under the guise of Sweeney Todd, seeking revenge on the corrupt judge who sent him to prison on a trumped-up charge in order to get his hands on Barker\u2019s wife, Lucy. Alongside the deranged Mrs. Lovett, who runs a meat pie shop, Todd embarks on a murder spree, using his razor and barber chair to kill his victims as Lovett bakes the bodies into her pies. As the show proceeds, the absurd plot resolves into satirical cogency, giving way to the prominent\u2014and devastating\u2014metaphor of mankind devouring itself.<\/p>\n Holy Cross\u2019 production explodes open with the entire cast of almost thirty students imploring us to \u201cattend the tale of Sweeney Todd.\u201d The sopranos pierce through the atmospheric, all-encompassing grasp the chorus holds over us while \u201cThe Ballad of Sweeney Todd\u201d introduces us to the vengeful, razor-wielding demon barber. This Brechtian opening, directly addressing the audience, acknowledges that we exist in the same world as the nineteenth-century Londoners up on stage. Dieter leverages this acknowledgment to impose a contemporary twist on the story, applying casting and wardrobe unbound by gender, cultural, and historical constraints.<\/p>\n Kurt Hultgren\u2019s detailed costuming, Anshuman Bhatia\u2019s sweeping set pieces, and Sondheim\u2019s Grand-Guignol-inspired score, tackled masterfully by Scott Koljonen, all immerse us in the grimy and oppressive London. Deiter\u2019s utilization of these elements, combined with Corey Whittemore\u2019s lighting, kindled one of the production\u2019s greatest strengths: the innovative use of the Luth Concert Hall. The amber-tinted venue, situated within the grander Prior Performing Arts Center, opened in Fall 2022. Building on the increasingly immersive staging of previous musicals in the venue, from Company<\/em> in 2023 to Oklahoma!<\/em> in 2024, Sweeney Todd<\/em> uses the hall to its fullest potential. Actors spread across the space\u2014convulsing on the floor, singing in the balcony, and climbing through the audience; the ensemble, crawling up from beneath the stage, screaming, and smearing their makeup across their faces in thrilling moments of visceral intensity. This not only elevated the show\u2019s horror elements but also brought a level of engagement and physicality that enhanced its overall impact.<\/p>\n Traditionally, the production does not move around the stage all too much; however, Bhatia\u2019s ingenious set design\u2014a pie shop base with the barber shop on top of it, flanked by two three-story scaffolding appendages\u2014allows for a variety of settings. Bombastic, choreography-heavy numbers like the opening of Act Two, \u201cGod, That\u2019s Good,\u201d juxtapose quaint tunes like \u201cNot While I\u2019m Around,\u201d which involves Matt Hollatz\u2019s Toby, the pseudo-adopted son of Todd and Lovett\u2019s twisted nuclear family, and Bridget Campbell\u2019s Mrs. Lovett sitting on a couch. One of the most effective applications of the set is during \u201cLadies In Their Sensitivities\/Kiss Me,\u201d led by the hilarious and menacing Nik Karvelas as Beadle Bamford, the Judge\u2019s lawman. The quartet begins with The Beadle pointing Daniel Rentel\u2019s ruthless Judge Turpin toward Sweeney for a proper shave before he re-attempts to marry his adopted daughter, Johanna (the actual daughter of Sweeney and Lucy), played elegantly by Zara Wilson. As Beadle shares his insight into women\u2019s behavior on stage right, Johanna and her star-crossed lover Anthony, played by Michael Sheehan, formulate their plan to flee atop the second level of the scaffolding on stage left. As these micro scenes occur simultaneously, Beadle\u2019s \u201cLadies in Their Sensitivities\u201d is intercut with Johanna and Anthony\u2019s love song, \u201cKiss Me.\u201d Then, with all parties in harmony, the scenes move across one another as the lawmen ascend to the second floor of the scaffolding and the young couple moves down below, just as the quartet blends in tandem to finish the number\u2014an intricately layered example of the show\u2019s spirited blocking.<\/p>\n The most visually striking sequences of the show involve the entire cast. The shaving\/tooth-pulling competition between Sweeney and the laugh-out-loud-funny Victor Torres as Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli succeeds largely because of the surrounding commotion and antics of the ensemble. In another highlight, Anthony schemes to break Johanna out of the insane asylum Turpin and The Beadle put her in. This is where Dieter and the cast have the most fun: once Johanna shoots the corrupt headmaster of the asylum, Jonas Fogg, portrayed tyrannically by Mary Grace Kelly, all hell breaks loose. Every surrounding door of the concert hall bursts open with vigorous force as the asylum patients wail and screech of the \u201cCity on Fire.\u201d Dancers contort their bodies on stage like creepy dolls, and the hairs on my neck stand straight up. Dieter\u2019s introduction of stand-alone dance numbers into her adaptation, something largely absent from other versions, is crucial to the dynamism of this production. Audra Carabetta, alongside assistant choreographer Rachel Golden and featured dancer Sophie Rego, conceived a particular style of dance that fit the slithering, urchin-esque undertone of the show.<\/p>\n As a repeat viewer, I can attest that the cast is exceedingly captivating to watch over and over again. As soon as Jimmy Duffy\u2019s Sweeney Todd catches your eye during \u201cEpiphany,\u201d you feel your heart skip a beat as if he is really going to jump out at you and cut your throat. Bridget Campbell marvelously transforms into the Sweeney-obsessed lunatic Mrs. Lovett. The way she lets her body go limp as Todd waltzes her around the stage tells you all you need to know about her character. And not once did Lilly Percival let out an impassioned shrill in front of my seat that made me doubt her portrayal as an old, disturbed beggar woman. As the entire cast embodies these tortured adults, you never think for a second that any of them might be off to write lab reports or solve problem sets after the show. There is something eminently raw and beautiful about watching your peers make art in front of your eyes\u2014a distinctive gift of being a part of the Holy Cross community, I think.<\/p>\n As a classic piece of musical theater, Sweeney Todd<\/em> captures themes of absolute power and obsession, driving home how these forces can shape our destinies. Yet this production\u2019s significance extends beyond the musical itself, leaving an indelible mark on the Theatre program and The Prior Performing Arts Center. This remarkable show undoubtedly exhibits the kind of multi-faceted artistic brilliance that epitomizes this new era for the arts at the College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In February 2025, The Holy Cross Department of Theatre and Dance unveiled a most audacious artistic achievement, crafting a haunting and enthralling tale of revenge and obsession. On the subject of obsession, I attended seven out of the eight times that Holy Cross performed Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In… Continue reading Sweeney Todd, Jackson MacLeod ’25<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"issue":[11],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volumes","issue-vol-1-spring-2025","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}