A Razor-Sharp Staging of ‘Sweeney Todd’

WASHINGTON -- Brian Stokes Mitchell became famous among Los Angeles musical theater audiences for playing a character who is so distraught over the loss of the woman he loved that he takes drastic action against those forces in society that he believes were responsible for her death. We’re talking about his mesmerizing Coalhouse Walker in “Ragtime.” Coalhouse, move over. Mitchell is now playing another man who fits the above description: the title character in “Sweeney Todd.”

And a sensational Sweeney he is.

Word of his performance has spread. Members of the audience at the Kennedy Center’s Sondheim Celebration begin applauding at the first sight of Mitchell, paying homage to the star and lessening the impact of the character’s chilling entrance. Still, with his wrathful eyes gleaming, his masterful baritone at full throttle, his lithe and lean frame stiffened into the posture of a man on the edge of a precipice, Mitchell evokes one thrilling moment after another. In his frustration over his botched first attempt to take his revenge, he directly addresses the audience, as if he might break the fourth wall and start hacking away with his faithful razor in the expensive seats.

When he isn’t frightening the daylights out of everyone, his ungainly laugh in “A Little Priest” is equally unforgettable. So is his deadpan stare when his jolly compatriot in crime, Mrs. Lovett, suggests marriage. Those who don’t get to see him at the Kennedy Center can console themselves with the assurance that it’s almost inconceivable that this performance will end in Washington. Surely someone will hire Mitchell to play Sweeney in a commercial revival--which would appear overdue, considering the increasing and justifiable reverence accorded to the great Sondheim score and to Hugh Wheeler’s libretto, based on Christopher Bond’s adaptation of the Victorian tale of “the demon barber of Fleet Street.”

Commercial producers might well want to bring back Christine Baranski too as Mrs. Lovett. Some lucky Angelenos already saw her in a brief Reprise! production of “Sweeney Todd” at the Ahmanson in 1999, but she has polished every nuance by now. Her scrappy attempts to create a happier life with her psychopathic lover are hilarious and touching. Christopher Ashley’s staging also benefits from another veteran of the Reprise! production, musical director Larry Blank, who honors the textures of Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations with the 25-piece Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, despite an occasionally overamplified sound design (with some awkward pops and squawks at the performance I saw) by Tom Morse.

The cast includes a current L.A. stage favorite, Hugh Panaro, as the sailor Anthony Hope, wrapping his carefully enunciated tenor around “Johanna.” Walter Charles is excellent as the dastardly Judge Turpin, who gets a full-blown version of the self-flagellation scene that’s sometimes left out of local productions. Derek McLane’s set is full of exposed pipes and scaffolding for that early Industrial Revolution look, intensified by the haze of Howell Binkley’s lighting.

Ashley takes advantage of the depth of the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater to stage some long, moody entrances from the rear that provide visual contrast to the literally slashing movement and the hustle-bustle of the crowd at the forefront.

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“Sweeney Todd,” in repertory through June 30. (800) 444-1324 or www.kennedy-center.org/sondheim.