SWEENEY TODD
The Demon of Barber of Fleet Street
A Musical Thriller
OCTOBER 12 (7:30 PM), OCTOBER 14 (7 PM), OCTOBER 16 (7 PM), OCTOBER 18 (7:30 PM), OCTOBER 20 (2 PM)
Music and Lyrics by Stephen
From an adaptation by Christopher Bond
Originally Directed on Broadway by Harold Prince Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick
Originally produced on Broadway by Richard Barr, Charles Woodward, Robert Fryer, Mary Lea Johnson, Martin Richards in Association with Dean and Judy Manos
Premiere – March 1, 1979, New York, Uris Theatre
Utah Opera Premiere
Performed in English with English Supertitles (Captions)
CAST
(in order of vocal appearance)
Anthony Hope
Sweeney Todd
John Riesen
Michael Mayes
Beggar Woman ........................ Megan Marino
Mrs. Lovett
Judge Turpin
Audrey Babcock
David Soar
Beadle ................................ Bille Bruley
Johanna
Tobias Ragg
Bird Keeper
Pirelli
Jonas Fogg
ARTISTIC TEAM
Conductor ........................... Robert Tweten
Stage Director
Movement Director
Chorus Director &
Assistant Conductor
Scenic Designer
Amy Owens**
Christian Sanders**
Dyson Ford
Thomas Glenn
Kevin Nakatani
Set and costumes rented from Des Moines Metro Opera.
Sweeney Todd scenery designed by R. Keith Brumley with costumes designed by Jonathan Knipscher
Scenery and Costumes originally designed for Des Moines Metro Opera
Supertitles courtesy of Madison Opera
SWEENEY TODD
Is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI).
Doug Scholz-Carlson
Heidi Spesard-Noble
Austin McWilliams
R. Keith Brumley
Costume Designer ................ Jonathan Knipscher
Lighting Designer James Sale
Sound Designer/Board Operator Aaron Hubbard
Wig & Makeup Designer Kate Casalino
Principal Coach
Guest Coach
Carol Anderson
Lindsay Woodward**
Assistant Director Emilio Casillas
Stage Manager
Assistant Stage Managers
Lisa R. Hays
Mickey Acton
Lucy Guillemette
Supertitle Musician ....................Brooke Hundley
All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com
Any video and/or audio recording of this production is strictly prohibited.
The performance run time is approximately 2 hours 30 minutes, including one intermission
**Former Resident Artist
JANET QUINNEY LAWSON CAPITOL THEATRE
Sondheim Book by Hugh Wheeler
Audrey Babcock (California)
Mrs. Lovett
Most Recently at Utah Opera, Man of La Mancha
Recently:
La traviata, Opera Omaha
Aida, Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre
Upcoming:
Cavalleria rusticana, Opera Orlando
Carmen (director), Opera Memphis
R. Keith Brumley
Scenic Designer
Most Recently at Utah Opera, Flight
Recently:
Tosca, Pittsburgh Opera
Carmen, Austin Opera
Upcoming: Don Giovanni, Opera Omaha
Bille Bruley (New York) Beadle
Most Recently at Utah Opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs
Recently:
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, San Francisco Opera
Jenůfa, Lyric Opera of Chicago
Upcoming:
Salome, The Metropolitan Opera
Kate Casalino (New York)
Wig & Makeup Designer
Most Recently at Utah Opera, Thaïs
Recently:
The Queen of Versailles, Emerson Colonial Theatre
The Little Prince, Utah Opera
Upcoming:
Faust, Academy of Vocal Arts
Hansel & Gretel, Utah Opera
Thomas Glenn (Utah) Pirelli
Most Recently at Utah Opera, The Marriage of Figaro
Recently:
Manon, Opera Idaho
Falstaff, Palm Beach Opera
Upcoming: Opera Gala, Macao Symphony
Jonathan Knipscher (New York)
Costume Designer
Most Recently at Utah Opera, Flight
Recently:
Sweeney Todd, Austin Opera Flight, The Dallas Opera
Aaron Hubbard (Utah) Sound Designer
Utah Opera Debut
Recently:
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Pioneer Theatre Company
Bonnie and Clyde, Pioneer Theatre Company
Upcoming:
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, GEVA Waitress, Pioneer Theatre Company
Megan Marino (South Carolina) Beggar Woman
Most Recently at Utah Opera, The Long Walk
Recently:
Der Rosenkavalier, The Santa Fe Opera
The Sound of Music, Houston Grand Opera
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Atlanta Opera
Upcoming:
La traviata, Seiji Ozawa Music Academy
Michael Mayes (South Carolina)
Sweeney Todd
Utah Opera Debut
Recently:
The Righteous, The Santa Fe Opera
Das Rheingold, Staatsoper Stuttgart
Upcoming:
Casanova, Staatsoper Stuttgart
Macbeth, The Atlanta Opera
Amy Owens (New Mexico)
Johanna
Most Recently at Utah Opera, The (R)evolution of Steve
Jobs
Recently:
Sondheim Tonight, San Diego Symphony
Candide, Wichita Grand Opera
Upcoming: The Cook Off, Nashville Opera
Austin McWilliams (Missouri)
Chorus Director & Assistant Conductor
Utah Opera Debut
Recently:
Associate Conductor & Chorus Master, Opera Grand Rapids
Director of Choral Activities, Aquinas College
Upcoming:
Utah Symphony | Utah Opera 2024–25 Season
John Riesen (New York)
Anthony Hope
Most Recently at Utah Opera, The Pirates of Penzance
Recently:
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Pacific Symphony Orchestra
La bohème, Opera Montana
Upcoming:
Carmen, Sioux City Symphony
Carmina Burana, Oratorio Society of NY
Mr. Mayes sponsored by The Scott & Jennifer Huntsman Utah Opera Enhancement Fund
James Sale (Colorado)
Lighting Designer
Most Recently at Utah Opera, La bohème
Recently:
Falstaff, Palm Beach Opera
Sweeney Todd, Austin Opera
Upcoming:
Turandot, Lyric Opera of Kansas City
Doug Scholz-Carlson (Minnesota)
Stage Director
Most Recently at Utah Opera, Silent Night
Recently:
Grounded, The Metropolitan Opera
Hamlet, Great River Shakespeare Festival
Roméo et Juliette, Lyric Opera of Kansas City
Fire Shut Up in my Bones, The Metropolitan Opera
Upcoming:
Moby-Dick, The Metropolitan Opera
The Comedy of Errors, Great River Shakespeare Festival
Christian Sanders (Georgia)
Tobias Ragg
Most Recently at Utah Opera, The Little Prince
Recently:
Street Scene, Central City Opera
La bohème, Minnesota Opera
Upcoming:
The Little Prince, Pacific Opera Victoria
Loving v. Virginia (world premiere), Virginia Opera
David Soar (California)
Judge Turpin
Utah Opera Debut
Recently:
Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Festival Napa Valley
Sweeney Todd, Opernhaus Zürich
Upcoming:
Alexander’s Feast, Salzburg Mozartwoche Festival
Messiah, Saint Thomas Church, New York City
Mr. Scholz-Carlson sponsored by:
Heidi Spesard-Noble Movement Director
Most Recently at Utah Opera, Thaïs
Recently:
The Elixir of Love, Minnesota Opera
Edward Tulane (world premiere), Minnesota Opera
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Cedar SummerStock
Upcoming:
Scrooge in Rouge, Open Eye Theater
Chorus
Soprano
Anadine Burrell
Kahli Dalbow
Kiersten Honaker
Jennifer Riley
Katie Sullivan
Carolyn Talboys-Klassen
Alto
Jen Hancock
Melissa James
Deborah Johnson
Shelly Swenson
Dawn Veree
Lindsay Whitney
Robert Tweten (New Mexico) Conductor
Most Recently at Utah Opera, La bohème
Recently:
Die Fledermaus, New England Conservatory
Falstaff, The Santa Fe Opera
Upcoming:
Rigoletto, Pacific Opera Victoria
Susannah, New England Conservatory
Tenor
Dyson Ford
Elijah Hancock
Edward Lopez
Layton Loucks
Lucas Henry Proctor
Carson Smith
Bass
Buddy Eyre
Charles Hamilton
Thomas Klassen
Erick Mosteller
Kevin Nakatani
Mark Sorensen
SYNOPSIS: THE TALE OF SWEENEY TODD
Act I
The young sailor Anthony Hope is on a dock in London with Sweeney Todd, whom he rescued at sea and befriended. Todd sketchily describes his past as a barber named Benjamin Barker, when a corrupt judge’s lust for Sweeney’s wife resulted in her madness, his exile, and his return under his current alias. Meanwhile, in the course of bemoaning the troubles with her business selling meat pies, the slatternly Mrs. Lovett learns that Sweeney Todd is the former Benjamin Barker. She vows to keep his secret, and a partnership is formed.
Johanna, Sweeney’s daughter, has become the ward of the judge who brutalized her mother, Lucy, driving Lucy to her presumed suicide. Now Sweeney swears revenge, while Anthony, with the help of a mysterious beggar woman, has noticed Johanna and is smitten. Sweeney offers his shop as a safe house for the young couple. His snowballing revenge plot begins with a shaving contest between himself and a phony Italian barber and shyster, Adolfo Pirelli, who—under the name Daniel O’Higgins—was once his assistant. The wrathful Sweeney wins the contest, then slits O’Higgins’s throat…and there’s no turning back. Though Mrs. Lovett is initially appalled and frightened, she quickly adapts to the new reality of a revenge-fueled business, first swiping Pirelli-O’Higgins’s coin purse, then developing a new idea for baking meat pies with a secret ingredient.
Act II
Several weeks later, Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop is a thriving business specially adapted for her and Sweeney’s needs—with reciprocating barber chairs and a trap door for dispatched customers. As they ply their deadly trade, Anthony makes his way to a lunatic asylum typical of the era where the judge has imprisoned Johanna. In making their escape, Johanna shoots a guard and they are forced to flee with Johanna disguised as a sailor.
At length, Sweeney gets the judge where he wants him— in his barber chair—but after slitting his throat, a chaotic death struggle ensues in which the mysterious beggar woman who first brought Johanna to Anthony’s attention is recognized as Sweeney’s wife, whose suicide attempt all those years ago was unsuccessful but left her insane. Believing that Mrs. Lovett concealed this truth from him, Sweeney dispatches Mrs. Lovett into her own oven before losing his reason, like his now-dead wife.
Epilogue
In a final ensemble comparable to those in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny, the characters of Sweeney Todd rise from the dead and address the audience. They warn us against seeking revenge, though, as they readily admit, “everybody does it.” The audience stands in for all of humanity as Sweeney, with a final sneer, expresses his contempt for us and for life itself.
SONDHEIM AND SWEENEY IN THE OPERA HOUSE
By Michael Clive
With its astonishing book by Hugh Wheeler— gripping, lurid, yet mordantly funny—
Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant Sweeney Todd has triumphed in opera houses and concert halls, on television screens, and in movie theaters around the world. It requires a cast of versatile actors who happen to have operatic voices, particularly in its two leading roles: the tormented, obsessed Sweeney and his demented partner, Mrs. Lovett. Is it, in fact, an opera? Well, we’ll get to that debate a couple of paragraphs from now. First, we must acknowledge Sondheim’s standing as one of the towering geniuses of the American musical theater.
Usually it takes critics and scholars decades to pronounce such a judgment. Yet the anointed experts were hailing Sondheim as a composer and lyricist who was changing the history of the American musical theater even while he was still a young man and his shows were failing to sell out on Broadway. He was only 34 when his first Broadway musical, Anyone Can Whistle, opened on the Great White Way and closed nine days later. But by then he was already revered for work he had done in his twenties as lyricist for shows including West Side Story and Gypsy
Sondheim was deeply influenced by the mentorship of Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers, but his style was uniquely his own and uniquely modern from the outset. It is characterized by witty, intricately nesting rhymes masking intense moments of human drama. And, at least at first, critics and theatergoers were not ready for it. Three of the shows he created in the 1970s, when he was in his forties—Company, Follies and Pacific Overtures—gained legendary status only when, after disappointing ticket sales and premature closings, they were belatedly recognized
as masterpieces ahead of their time. Finally, a day late and a dollar short, the public pounced on the substance and psychological insight in Sondheim’s words and music. This kind of musical creativity, deeply observed and rendered with consummate skill, was new to Broadway musicals.
Continuing to go his own way, at age forty-nine Sondheim created the music and lyrics for a musical drama on an unlikely subject: a London barber obsessed with the memory of his wife’s rape and brutalization by a corrupt judge, and his quest to avenge her. Here, as always with Sondheim, the combination of words and music finds the universal within the particular. Few of us have experienced the kinds of murderous injustices that obsess Sweeney, but we all have memories that haunt us…memories that we relive in our darkest moments. For director Hal Prince, Sondheim’s frequent collaborator who worked with him to mount the show’s first production, Sweeney was also caught in the dehumanizing vortex of England’s great age of industrialization—an overlooked victim of its “dark satanic mills.” So there is a bit of Sweeney in anyone who has been victimized by a corrupt bureaucracy or felt like a small cog in the machinery of big business—in other words, all of us.
But is it an opera? Though Sweeney Todd has often been called Sondheim’s most operatic work, he consistently denied this claim. But writing in the December 23, 2005 edition of London’s The Guardian newspaper, writer Michael Billington quoted some very expert opinions to support it. “I remember being blown away by the work when I first saw it at New York’s cavernous, 1,700-seat Uris Theatre in 1979,” Billington noted. “…Here was a show that, in the heartland of capitalism, attacked greed, rapacity and exploitation. Its hero was no sympathetic smoothie, but a vengeful barber turned serial killer. And, musically, it seemed a sophisticated amalgam of Bernard Herrmann, Benjamin Britten and the Dies Irae. Indeed, on the first night Harold Clurman, the doyen of American theatre critics, rushed up to [Schuyler Chapin], former general manager of The Metropolitan Opera, demanding to know why he had not put it on at the Met. To which Chapin replied: ‘I would have put it on like a shot if I’d had the opportunity. There would have been screams and yells but I wouldn’t have given a damn. Because it is an opera. A modern American opera.’”
Eleven years later, Sondheim’s charming, wistful A Little Night Music was successfully mounted by New York City Opera— The Metropolitan Opera’s neighbor at Lincoln Center.
SWEENEY TODD AND THE PENNY DREADFUL TRADITION
By Michael Clive
Sweeney Todd’s long road to Broadway began with the “penny dreadful,” a popular genre of escapist entertainments that were highly melodramatic and often gruesome. Penny dreadfuls were popular in America and England in the 19th Century; in the U.S. they could be viewed in “opera houses” of a hundred or so seats that were common even in small towns. Despite scenarios that were often violent, most penny dreadfuls were intended as family entertainments and could be pointedly moralistic. But people didn’t frequent the penny dreadfuls to learn ethics; they went to have the living daylights scared out of them by witnessing acts of violence that surpassed their worst nightmares, and by the suffering of characters whose lives were even more dire than their own—the same reasons why Parisians attended the bloodsoaked Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, and why, in our own time, slasher films remain popular.
Sweeney’s first stage appearance probably came in a London penny dreadful based on a story called
“The String of Pearls” that was serialized in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846–47. Set in 1785 and reportedly based on an actual murder (as recorded in The Annual Register of London), the story incorporated plot elements that made it an ideal subject for a penny dreadful—mainly mayhem—and was adapted as a play even before the ending was revealed to readers. With the impetus of a fleshed-out (gored-out?) version published in 1850, Sweeney migrated to America in 1852, and an expanded stage version was produced in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd’s name and notoriety had spread throughout England and much of America.
And there things might have remained, had it not been for the creative imagination of Christopher Bond, a British actor, playwright, and director who reframed Sweeney’s story as a play that was something more than just a horrorshow. Bond’s Sweeney Todd added depth and sophistication to the tale, providing the backstory that provides Sweeney’s motivation and incorporating elements of Jacobean drama, in which horrifying violence is anchored by moral conflict.
Author Larry Davis Brown writes persuasively about the impact of Bond’s play upon Sondheim and quotes Sondheim as saying, “What I did to Chris’ play is more than enhance it. I had a feeling it would be a new animal. The effect it had at Stratford East in London and the effect [my version] had at the Uris Theater in New York are two entirely different effects, even though it’s the same play. It was essentially charming over there because they don’t take Sweeney Todd seriously. Our production was larger in scope.” Most notably, Sondheim, Wheeler, and Prince added weight to the drama, defining the moral and social questions facing Sweeney Todd—and all of us.
Stephen Sondheim Music & Lyrics
STEPHEN SONDHEIM (1930–2021) wrote the music and lyrics for Saturday Night (1954), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994), Road Show (2008), and Here We Are (2023), as well as the lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965) and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99), Moving On (2001), Sondheim On Sondheim (2010), and Old Friends (2023) are anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist. For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974), co-composed the score for Reds (1981), and wrote songs for Dick Tracy (1990). He wrote songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away With Murder (1996) and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer (1956), Invitation To A March (1961), Twigs (1971), and The Enclave (1973).
He won the Tony Award for Best Score for Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Passion, all of which won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday In The Park With George, the latter also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1985).
Stephen Sondheim was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt. He served on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists, and served as its president from 1973 to 1981. In 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1990 was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University. He was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993, the National Medal of Arts in 1996, the MacDowell Medal in 2013, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (2011).
In 2010 the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller’s Theatre was renamed in his honor, and in 2019 he became the first living artist to have a theatre named in his honor on Shaftesbury Avenue when the refurbished Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End was renamed the Sondheim Theatre to commemorate his 90th birthday, by Sir Cameron Mackintosh.
Hugh Wheeler Book
Hugh Wheeler was a novelist, playwright, and screen writer. He wrote more than thirty mystery novels under the pseudonyms Q. Patrick and Patrick Quentin, and four of his novels were transformed into films: Black Widow, Man in the Net, The Green-Eyed Monster and The Man with Two Wives. For films he wrote the screenplays for Travels with My Aunt, Something for Everyone, A Little Night Music, and Nijinsky. His plays include Big Fish, Little Fish (1961), Look: We’ve Come Through (1961) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1966, adapted from the Shirley Jackson novel), he coauthored with Joseph Stein the book for a new production of the 1919 musical Irene (1973), wrote the books for A Little Night Music (1973), a new production of Candide (1973), Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979, based on a version of the play by Christopher Bond), and Meet Me in St. Louis (adapted from the 1949 M-G-M musical), contributed additional material for the musical Pacific Overtures (1976), and wrote a new adaptation of the Kurt Weill opera Silverlake, which was directed by Harold Prince at the New York City Opera. He received Tony and Drama Desk Awards for A Little Night Music, Candide, and Sweeney Todd. Prior to his death in 1987 Mr. Wheeler was working on two new musicals, Bodo and Fu Manchu, and a new adaptation of The Merry Widow.
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International (MTI) is one of the world’s leading theatrical licensing agencies, granting theatres from around the world the rights to perform the greatest selection of musicals from Broadway and beyond. Founded in 1952 by composer Frank Loesser and orchestrator Don Walker, MTI is a driving force in advancing musical theatre as a vibrant and engaging art form.
MTI works directly with the composers, lyricists, and book writers of these musicals to provide official scripts, musical materials and dynamic theatrical resources to over 100,000 professional, community and school theatres in the US and in over 150 countries worldwide.
MTI is particularly dedicated to educational theatre, and has created special collections to meet the needs of various types of performers and audiences. MTI’s Broadway Junior® shows are 30- and 60-minute musicals for performance by elementary and middle school-aged performers, while MTI’s School Editions are musicals annotated for performance by high school students.