A bloody weekend: Kokandy’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ and MPAACT’s ’Red Summer’
Kevin Webb and Caitlin Jackson. Photo by Evan Hanover.
In the interest of disclosure: Quinn Rigg, one of our contributors, appears in the ensemble of Sweeney Todd.
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When Kokandy Productions announced Kevin Webb and Caitlin Jackson as the leads in their Halloween-timed production of Sweeney Todd, my ears pricked right up. Here were two performers who I've been following for the last many years—Webb via the arch and macabre Black Button Eyes Productions; Jackson, the garish Hell in a Handbag. Both have turned in standout performances in the shows I've seen with them; both always seemed to be on a verge of a big break; and both seemed especially right for the demon barber and the infernal baker of Fleet Street.
With Sweeney Todd, their respective turns are as thrilling as this musical thriller can get and then some.
In many ways, this is still Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's nigh-indestructible paean to Grand Guignol and Bernard Herrmann. In other ways, Derek Van Barham's concept and direction is like laying a cel over the magnificent score: not an imposition, but a transposition. As in: Sweeney Todd has never wanted for a zombified chorus lurking about, but their inclusion here is surprisingly illuminating, even if this is your second or twelfth Sweeney.
It’s never wanted for a turntable and a gazillion Edison bulbs hanging on by a filament, either, but G. “Max” Maxin IV takes full advantage of the Chopin’s claustrophobic, tzotchke’d basement and turns it into something appropriately discomfiting.
If you’re familiar with it, imagine that actor-musician Sweeney that hit Broadway some seasons back, but without the actor-musicians, just as many props, and with a sense of humor.
Sweeney Todd doesn’t work without its pitch-black humor, and I don’t know if Jackson could ever suppress that side of her, and thank that dark and hungry god she doesn’t. Her Mrs. Lovett—glassy-eyed yet turbulent, wicked yet sexy, and above all done with the perfect illusion of effortlessness—might be the creation of the fall season. Webb’s Sweeney, meanwhile, if a bit of a cold brew—one that emphasizes his ultimate impotence and naïveté—is still a twitchy unholy terror, especially as he sings so rapturously while racking up a body count. He and Christopher Johnson’s Judge Turpin just go to show that the storefront bass-baritone is a perilously endangered species.
Nick Sula’s music direction, meanwhile, proves that fine singing is not endangered, not while he’s around.
Even with a sure bet like Sweeney Todd, it’s nice to see a bet pay off. This Sweeney by rights should set this city on fire.
Sweeney Todd runs through November 6th at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St. For tickets or more information, please click here.
The Company. Photo by Abboye Lawrence.
Concerned as it is with the Chicago race riots of 1919 and everything that followed (and everything that hasn’t changed since), let it be said that Red Summer—produced by the Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theater (MPAACT)—has noble intentions.
The pitch: think Paradise Square if Paradise Square wasn’t produced by the real-life Max Bialystock.
Though two of its writers—Shepsu Aakhu and Shawn Wallace—were unknown to me, I was familiar with the name Andrew White, he who wrote the libretto for Eastland, one of my hipsterishly favorite musicals, as fine a piece as any to examine the little big hopes and dreams of Chicago’s working class circa 1915. His folky sensibility for that show seemed exactly right for this one.
I feel that I ultimately must defer judgement. The piece I saw simply wasn’t ready for presentation.
It calls itself a musical, but it felt more like a play with the odd song. Exposition numbers were still cropping up at the end of the first act. The music was never quite there, never quite oomph-ish enough for the story at hand. The central motor of the plot—two South Side army buddies, one Black, one white, being inexorably torn apart—never quite revved as it should. The death of Eugene Williams—what ought to be the inciting incident—neither incites much of anything nor does it close the first act on a note of pathos and dread. We only really gather there’s a riot going on because someone turned on the fire projections.
Worst of all, the sound mixing is abysmal, so half the libretto is incomprehensible.
While I would be very happy to revisit this piece in time, this go-around is a pay-to-see workshop. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
Red Summer runs through September 25th at the Center for Performing Arts at Governors State University, University Park, IL. For tickets or more information, please call (708) 235-2222 or click here.