SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET • Fly North Theatricals

It seems only fitting that Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd be staged at a venue named after one of its songs: "Green Finch and Linnet Bird." But staging this sweeping musical in the snug Greenfinch Theatre space is a hefty undertaking, and Fly North Theatricals handles the challenge with mostly successful results.

The grisly tale of Sweeney Todd has been around since the Victorian era. The character was first introduced in an 1846 penny dreadful called “The String of Pearls”. Penny dreadfuls were immensely popular serialized stories that focused on the sensational. The story concerned a murderous barber and his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, who baked his victims into her meat pies. British playwright Christopher Bond adapted this story in the early 1970s, giving Todd a backstory and a motive for his dark deeds, having been wrongly sentenced to life so the degenerate Judge Turpin could have Todd’s wife for his own. Stephen Sondheim saw musical theatre promise in the play, and he, along with book writer Hugh Wheeler, transformed Sweeney Todd into an expansive, harmonically intricate, discordant, psychologically complex musical thriller. That version premiered in 1979, and won eight Tony Awards.

RAISIN • The Black Rep

In a cramped apartment on Chicago’s South Side, the Youngers are about to receive a windfall from an insurance payout, and a couple members of the family have different ideas about how best to spend it. Based on Lorraine Hansberry’s remarkable landmark drama, A Raisin in the Sun, this Tony award-winning musical adaptation preserves all of the emotional beats of the play, with songs that add breadth to the lives of its characters, while only occasionally interrupting the momentum of the plot. But this is a quibble with the musical, and not the production. Under the direction of The Black Rep’s founder, Ron Himes, Raisin soars and dips through the aspirations and hardships of a working-class family living in the 1950s, when a piece of the American Dream glinted just inside the fringes of what seemed possible.

EVITA • The Muny

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1979 rock opera begins with a death. 33 year-old Evita Perón’s (Katerina McCrimmon), coffin rests high on a mound of flowers above Argentine mourners who revered her as a saint. But the lamentations are interrupted by Che (Omar Lopez-Cepero), who sees Evita as a master manipulator.

Che (Omar Lopez-Cepero) and the cast of Evita
Phot credit: Phillip Hamer

Given the nickname "Evita" as a term of endearment, the conflicting narratives of Eva Perón’s legacy continue to persist because her rise from the slums of Argentina to the country’s first lady remain iconically universal. The events of Eva’s life are primarily told and not shown, with Rice and Lloyd Webber laying out the opposing accounts before us -- the hero of the working classes vs. the social-climbing tart despised by the elite, letting us walk away to come to our own conclusions.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE: THE MUSICAL • Fly North Theatricals

The Hoovers are a hapless, paper-plate-and-KFC kind of family, all walking under a cloud of their own woes. The only exceptions might be Grandpa, (Ken Haller), recently banned from the area's retirement homes for drug use and lewdness, and youngest daughter Olive (Zoe Klevorn), who dreams of becoming the first Miss America from New Mexico. When a contestant from a local kid’s beauty pageant is disqualified, Olive has a shot to get a step closer to her goal by taking on the Little Miss Sunshine competition in California. And of course, a lot can happen on a road trip from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California.

Fly North Theatrical’s production is presented “pay-what-you-want” as part of their Theater for All Initiative (TFAI) - aiming to make seeing and learning the performing arts in St. Louis more financially accessible. This is something FNT’s Artistic Director Colin Healy and Managing Director Bradley Rohlf are passionate about, and the performances of the FNT students working alongside professional actors serve as a clear testament to the program. (You can read more about that here.) 

EVITA • The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

There’s a slip of the tongue from Eva Duarte de Perón in “A New Argentina,” as she tries to ease her husband’s qualms about his presidential bid when she concedes, “We'll ... you'll be handed power on a plate.” In Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s biographical rock opera, the acquisition of power is something Eva Perón made her guiding principle since she was a kid. After chasing a career in stage, radio and film acting, she met Colonel Juan Perón and the two were married a year later.

THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA • R-S Theatrics

From 9 Circles and Adding Machine: The Musical, to The Cherry Sisters Revisited, Parade and In the Heights, R-S Theatrics has never shied away from the risk of locally debuting ambitious plays and musicals. Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer, Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza concerns Clara (Macia Noorman), a twenty-something girl from Winston-Salem, who falls in love with a boy while traveling in Italy. Her mother, Margaret (Kay Love), is torn between her instincts to protect Clara, whose mental development was stunted as the result of a childhood accident, and her dreams of happiness and fulfillment for her daughter.

FAUST (go down with all the re$t) • Equally Represented Arts

ERA is at it again, kicking off FAUSTival -- an artistic collaboration among Equally Represented Arts, The Midnight Company, Theatre Nuevo, SATE, and the Post-Romantics. Each company will present an adaptation of the Faust myth over five months, and ERA’s ensemble-created rock-opera plays out at Foam, a coffeehouse/bar/music venue along Cherokee Street. With music composed by Kid Scientist, ERA takes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, includes text from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, and adds in some tv game shows to skewer capitalism and ask, “How much is a soul worth?”

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM • Stray Dog Theatre

The stage at Tower Grove Abbey is set for some tale tellin' in Stray Dog’s season closer, Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman’s The Robber Bridegroom. The musical was based on a novel that was loosely adapted from a Brothers Grimm story of the same name. Eudora Welty’s 1942 novel took the Grimm fairy tale and set it in 18th century Mississippi along the forests of the Natchez Trace. Uhry and Waldman’s musical has its share of fanciful, dark, even lurid elements, like you might expect from any fairy tale, but the score -- an uncommon blend of traditional Broadway music and authentic bluegrass, and Stray Dog’s tireless, country-fried cast of characters, provide a curiously savory mix.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR • Stray Dog Theatre

After an appearance last season at the Muny and a live broadcast this Easter, St. Louisans have another opportunity to catch Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's classic rock opera that’s been around since the '70s. Loosely based on the Gospels, Jesus Christ Superstar details the last week in the life of Jesus Christ -- a demanding show for any company, and Stray Dog’s production has some hits and some misses.

Omega Jones in the title role stands out as one of the show’s hits. With strong vocals (and a great upper-register), Jones’ charismatic presence is easygoing, winning over the audience and justifying the devotion of Jesus’ followers. His frustration when a flood of appeals from the down-trodden threaten to overwhelm him at the end of a nicely staged, “The Temple”, is well played, and after laying down a groundwork of growing despair, Jones delivers one of the high points of the night with “Gethsemane” -- full of hopelessness and appropriately jaded insolence.

ANYTHING GOES • New Line Theatre

The racy shenanigans and silly scheming going on among the passengers aboard a transatlantic cruise in Cole Porter’s, Anything Goes, offered a welcomed breather from the gloom of the Great Depression when it first set sail in 1934. New Line’s staging of the show’s 1962 version, energetically directed by Scott Miller and Mike Dowdy-Windsor, includes a song list jam-packed with Porter standards like “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and “Anything Goes,” and a strong cast to make those numbers soar. Though the book’s greatest strength may be its role as a vehicle for the tunes, it does offer a keen depiction of an America where gangsters are worshipped like celebrities and evangelism is akin to show business. Not much has changed on that score.

Evan Fornachon is Billy Crocker, a young stockbroker there to see off his boss, Wall Street exec. Elisha J. Whitney (Jeffrey M. Wright). He decides to stow away on the SS American after he spots Hope Harcourt (Eileen Engel), a girl whose heart he aims to win. Hope is traveling to London with her well-heeled husband-to-be, Sir Evelyn Oakleigh (Zachary Allen Farmer), and her social-climbing mother, Mrs. Harcourt (Kimmie Kidd-Booker). Billy’s pal Reno Sweeney (Sarah Porter), who traded up in her career from evangelist to nightclub singer, decides to help Billy in his romantic quest, along with Moonface Martin -- Public Enemy No. 13 (Aaron Allen), a gangster in priest’s clothing, and Bonnie Letour (Sarah Gene Dowling), moll to a goon called Snake Eyes Johnson.

LIZZIE • New Line Theatre

Just about everyone is familiar with the infamous story of Lizzie Borden, who went to trial for hacking her father and stepmother to death with a hatchet (or an axe, as the children’s rhyme goes). She was acquitted by a jury of 12 men in 1893, but the grisly details that came out during the trial transfixed the country, and after moving back to Fall River, Massachusetts, Borden was regarded with suspicion for the rest of her life. The story still captivates more than a century later, and New Line Theatre seems a fitting company to stage this defiant, mostly sung-through musical inspired by her, told in the language of unchecked rebellion -- straight-up rock.

The murders remain unsolved, but Lizzie collaborators Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt don’t attempt to dodge the question of Borden’s guilt -- that’s made pretty damn clear. But through a series of delectably catchy songs, delivered by a quartet of adept female leads, strong arguments are posed addressing Borden’s possible motivations, riffing off of historical accounts, long-held speculation and theories.

IN THE HEIGHTS • R-S Theatrics

Life in the New York City borough of Washington Heights is painted with spirited strokes in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical, In the Heights, and R-S Theatrics brings it to the stage in their biggest show to date. Covering a few days around a sweltering 4th of July, there’s a jackpot lottery ticket sold, a blackout, and two couples who fall for each other, while the pros and cons of remaining in a tight-knit community are weighed.

RAGTIME • Stray Dog Theatre

Stray Dog closes out its season with an excellent production of Terrence McNally’s sweeping musical adaptation, Ragtime. Based on E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, it places us at an intersection between the comfortable lives of suburbia, the disadvantaged lives in Harlem, and the enterprising optimism of newly-arrived immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. The painful growth of 1900's America is illustrated in Ragtime’s rousing prologue, where we are introduced to the ingredients in this uniquely American stew.

The upper-classes are represented by Mother (Kay Love), the matriarch of a well-to-do family living in New Rochelle, New York, that made their money manufacturing fireworks. Mother embraces everyone she meets with an open heart, and Love portrays her with a genteel determination, delivering a stirring ”Back to Before”. Mother’s husband, Father, in a solid performance by Phil Leveling, is a bit of a throwback -- resistant to the changing landscape of the country.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR • The Muny

When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s concept album was released in 1970, it was a big deal. Considered blasphemous by some, Superstar depicts the last week of Jesus of Nazareth’s life through a contemporary lens. The Muny’s 99th season opener proves that this pounding rock opera still resonates, incorporating themes of political activism with an absorbing score full of recurring musical motifs.

Lloyd Webber’s got a reputation for punishing his singers, and Superstar is no exception. Luckily, the leads are strong-voiced, starting with Tony nominated Constantine Maroulis of “American Idol” fame as Judas Iscariot. The opening number, "Heaven on Their Minds”, beautifully sets the narrative that centers more around Judas than Jesus -- he’s fearful of the growing fame Jesus is garnering, and the possible wrath this might bring down upon the Jews, and Maroulis makes a blazing first impression.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET • Stray Dog Theatre

Anybody hungry?

Stray Dog Theatre invites audiences to “Attend the tale...” in their latest offering, Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant, meaty musical thriller, Sweeney Todd. With a 2007 film version and contemporary stage variations, it’s a welcomed opportunity to get the chance to see this classic onstage in its more “OG” version -- though that wasn’t its original form.

The story of a murderous barber was introduced in a “Penny Dreadful” -- ghastly publications that were popular in the Victorian era. The serial, originally called “The String of Pearls: A Romance,” emerged many years and adaptations later, when Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical version debuted in 1979, winning eight Tony Awards.

There’s solid casting here, starting with Jonathan Hey in the title role. His imposing, brooding Sweeney will unnerve you -- in a good way. After being sent to the clink for life on a bogus charge, Sweeney escapes after 15 years and returns to London, hoping to discover the fate of his wife and daughter.

CELEBRATION • New Line Theatre

Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musical is pretty much devoid of any conventional narrative, with roots that reach back to ancient ritual and the winter solstice -- the planet’s shortest day and longest night. Clashes between Winter and Summer, from the beginning of time, have proven that the young inevitably conquer the old, and in Celebration, fresh ambition stamps out numb indifference. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 1969, but lost a little bit of its magic when it moved to the bigger Ambassador Theatre on Broadway. Rarely produced, the musical has undergone revisions over a long period of time, and New Line Theatre is the first to premiere this revised version. Under the lively direction of Scott Miller and Mike Dowdy-Windsor, the intimate black box space at the Marcelle seems like a marvelous fit.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and Orphan (Sean Michael), a young innocent, is in the big city, hoping to get the rights to his farm back so he can grow living things. The deed to the land is currently held by William Rosebud Rich (Zachary Allen Farmer).

FOLLIES • The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

The Rep’s 50th anniversary season kickoff was met with a palpable buzz -- and for good reason. While comfortably residing within the canon of Sondheim musicals, Follies is not often produced, but the Rep has pulled out all the stops on this one in an impressive reminder of why this musical is so cherished.

It’s 1971, and the home of the “Weismann's Follies” has long since seen its last lavish production number, and a reunion is taking place. Set designer, Luke Cantarella’s gorgeous backdrop of the dilapidated Weismann Theatre, is where the shadows of yesteryear mingle with the present talk of glamorous days gone by, and attempts to reverse the past bring regret. With a nimble cast of 28, including four sharp leads, a sweet 12-piece orchestra and Rob Ruggiero’s shrewd direction, the Rep’s production of this classic is a definitive one.

Love? Actually... • R-S Theatrics

Dedicated to presenting thought provoking St. Louis premieres, R-S Theatrics is at it again. R-S opens its “Season of Semi-Requited Love” with a collection of mostly musical one-acts to fill out a terrific evening, including its first-ever staging of a short opera by Steven Serpa.

Act 1 of the evening is a cabaret called “Out of a Bowl,” where random audience members come onstage and pull pieces of paper out of a bowl, and the corresponding numbers picked -- a mix of solos, duets and group numbers, are performed by members of the cast. The night I attended, Kelvin Urday performed “Mr. Brightside” by the rock band “The Killers” -- a song about crushing infidelity and its results. There was also Lindsay Gingrich, performing “Gooch’s Song” from Mame, Omega Jones and Eileen Engel in an entertaining, scenery-chewing "The Song That Goes Like This" from Spamalot, and a duet from Rent with Gingrich and Sarajane Alverson. The cabaret portion ended with a rousing group number, if memory serves, “Somebody to Love” from Queen.

TELL ME ON A SUNDAY • New Line Theatre

New Line Theatre closed its 25th anniversary season with an unlikely choice. It was an intimate, one-act, one-person musical about a British girl, Emma, living in the States and steering her way through the ups and downs of a string of romantic journeys. This lesser known musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber (Cats, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom of the Opera) was initially conceived as a cycle of shows for television. It eventually became the first act of Song & Dance in the early 80’s debuting in the West End, and then was finally re-introduced as a stand-alone one-act in 2003, with an Off-Broadway debut in 2008. While one-person shows fill some with dread, I would say to you; fear not. New Line veteran Sarah Porter definitively came into her own here. With a sung-through score of over 20 songs, Porter holds the evening together with a style that made it look easy.

BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL • Stray Dog Theatre

In 1992, Weekly World News published an outrageous, recurring story about a “bat child” spotted in a southern cave in West Virginia. Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming (book) and Laurence O'Keefe (songs) turned this tabloid tale into a musical about a family that takes Bat Boy in, and the effect this addition has on the family and their rural town of Hope Falls. As you might imagine, the show’s camp-factor is high, but Stray Dog Theatre’s production also unearths the show’s inherent themes of “otherness,” bonding, prejudice and fear, and grounds it with some strong, ardent performances.

Corey Fraine is the show’s intrepid and agile titular character, equipped with pointy ears and fangs. After being discovered by the Taylor kids, an alarmed Bat Boy takes a bite out of Ruthie (Lindsey Jones), gets a beatdown from Ruthie’s brother Rick (Michael A. Wells), and is taken to the Parker’s home to be put down. Thomas Parker (Patrick Kelly) is the local veterinarian, but by the time he gets home, Mrs. Meredith Parker (Dawn Schmid) has taken a liking to the little fella, and their teenage daughter, Shelley (Angela Bubash), takes to Bat Boy with all the passion of a child smitten with a puppy.