With a Killer Score, ‘Sweeney’ Keeps Its Edge

It was “Frasier” with a razor over the weekend at the Ahmanson. Opening its third season, “Reprise! Broadway’s Best in Concert”--the L.A. answer to New York’s “Encore!” series--on Friday presented the first of five semi-staged performances of the 1979 throttler “Sweeney Todd.”

The Grand Guignol pleasures of Stephen Sondheim’s score abounded. By design this concert version offered no fake blood (big savings here), no bodies tumbling down a trap door. It focused attention on the music, while offering performers, some better prepared than others, a shot at a show at once grand and tawdry.

In between “Frasier” episodes, Kelsey Grammer starred as Sweeney (the role originated by Len Cariou), the “demon barber” eager to rid the 19th century of its surplus population. Christine Baranski, that ruthlessly effective ham best known as Maryann on “Cybill,” took on Mrs. Lovett (originated by Angela Lansbury), purveyor of the worst pies in London. The worst, that is, until Sweeney starts providing her with higher-grade pie filling.

On a virtual summer stock rehearsal schedule of 10 days, Grammer--comfortable in a nice, easy bass-baritone range--couldn’t muster the vocal heft (or the pitch) the most difficult songs demand. His duets Friday with Ken Howard, surprisingly diffident as Judge Turpin, added an unwanted subtextual plea. Please, sir. We want some more time to practice.

Grammer relies on that familiar, rumbling, naturally authoritative speaking voice for effect, reminiscent of Orson Welles. As with Welles you’re made overly aware of that voice at times, at a given dramatic moment’s expense. Yet here, early on in particular, Grammer lent Sweeney a shrewdly considered loneliness beneath the psychopathic simmer. He’s a promising musical-theater talent, in addition to being a superb light comedian (as millions know). This particular role may not be in his immediate grasp, but with full rehearsal, plenty of others would be.

Baranski, by contrast, was ready to rip Friday. Working two or three steps beyond the concept of “presentational acting,” her Mrs. Lovett may have resorted to one too many takes, lolls of the tongue and transition-filling bits of shtick. But Baranksi’s such a skilled audience favorite, fully aware of her low-comic wiles, she gave things a welcome charge.

“Sweeney Todd” still throws audiences for a loop. The score’s lush creepiness, so cannily orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, worms its way into every crevice of this penny-dreadful tale. It features, among other things, a tender love song sung to a set of razors (“My Friends”). Its chief villain, the judge, lusts for his ward and whips himself for it. (The song “Johanna” was cut from the original Broadway version but routinely finds its way into revivals. It’s too much, really.)

Sondheim has said he wanted to write “a background score for a horror film,” and he did. He did so apparently after checking into the Bernard Herrmann Institute for Wracked Nerves. (Check out those weirdly escalating flutes under the titular “Ballad of Sweeney Todd”--pure Hitchcock, meaning pure Herrmann.) Sondheim’s musical wit, however, is far lighter. This show, which ended Sunday, may rub your nose in depravity, but Sondheim’s music--not to mention his famous, darting wit as a lyricist--leavens it just so.

In key roles director Calvin Remsberg’s staging received sterling support. Davis Gaines, many people’s favorite Phantom in “The Phantom of the Opera,” gave the (ineffectual) role of Anthony real feeling and a walloping set of pipes. Dale Kristien (Johanna), another “Phantom” alum, couldn’t make full sense of this stylistically conflicted distressed damsel--Sondheim and librettist Wheeler don’t seem sure how seriously to take her--but she proved a first-rate musical actress.

Scott Waara’s plummy rival barber Pirelli, Melissa Manchester’s (not so very) mysterious Beggar Woman, and especially Neil Patrick Harris’ affecting Tobias served this score extremely well. Fresh from “Rent,” where he acquitted himself better than Anthony Rapp did on Broadway, Harris is a versatile, subtle performer around whom a musical could, and should, be written.

The show’s original director, Harold Prince, attempted visually and otherwise to paint Sweeney into a no-win corner of the Industrial Revolution. Sondheim’s lyrics urge Sweeney on in his righteous slaughter of hypocrites, moralizers, the haves of the world. Infinitely dumber shows, such as “Jekyll & Hyde,” pull the same thing. It’s a veneer of seriousness.

But even in this jaded, strung-out age, with its post-”Sweeney” obsession with charismatic serial killers of the “Silence of the Lambs” variety, Sondheim’s score still imparts the cold creeps. Sondheim himself attended the Friday gala, a benefit for “Reprise!” and for the ASCAP Foundation. Following the performance, guest presenter Lansbury--noting a “passing connection” to “Sweeney’--introduced American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers president Marilyn Bergman. She in turn handed a grinning, charmingly befuddled Sondheim the ASCAP Founders Award.

Smiles all around. Yet the score’s menace lingered long afterward.

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Sweeney Todd

Kelsey Grammer: Sweeney Todd

Christine Baranksi: Nellie Lovett

Davis Gaines: Anthony

Dale Kristien: Johanna

Melissa Manchester: Beggar Woman

Neil Patrick Harris: Tobias Ragg

Scott Waara: Pirelli

Ken Howard: Judge Turpin

Roland Rusinek: The Beadle

A Reprise! Broadway’s Best in Concert presentation at the Ahmanson Theatre. Written by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler. Directed by Calvin Remsberg. Set by David Sackeroff. Costumes by David R. Zyla. Lighting by Tom Ruzika. Musical director Larry Blank. Choreographer Kay Cole. Stage manager Chari Shanker.