Taking another cut at it

During his tenure at East West Players, artistic director Tim Dang has staged an impressive array of Sondheim musicals, including a celebrated 1994 production of “Sweeney Todd” at the company’s old 99-seat Hollywood space.

Times and venues have changed, but Dang’s expertise as a Sondheim interpreter is evident in East West’s current production of “Sweeney” at its 240-seat Equity house in Little Tokyo. However, as Dang makes clear in the program notes, this production -- the third in East West’s 40th anniversary season -- is in no way a reprise, but an entirely fresh take on Sondheim’s durable, dreadful, bitterly funny masterwork, which features an appropriately lurid book by the late Hugh Wheeler.

Based on Victorian penny-dreadful accounts of a sanguinary barber whose victims are recycled into meat pies, “Sweeney” is attracting Broadway audiences in a scaled-down version starring Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris. Despite a few rough edges, the otherwise excellent East West production, produced with Sondheim’s special permission, promises to be a crowd pleaser.

John Binkley’s austere, malleable set features a central turntable that functions as several locales. Looming, gallows-like scaffolding makes for a macabre effect, as does Miles Ono’s excellent sound and Rand Ryan’s virtuosic lighting design, which incorporates the greenish tints of advanced corruption with sudden blasts of red that punctuate Sweeney’s murderous acts.

Dang marshals his performers with a keen sense of composition and pacing -- no mean feat in this demanding show. However, musical director Lisa Joe occasionally loses the thread of the score’s glistening, weblike musical intricacies, while Marc Oka’s workmanlike choreography has been reduced to an occasional side note.

Foremost among this formidable cast is Ronald M. Banks in the title role. His eyes glinting with purpose and madness, Banks’ gruesomely charismatic Sweeney strides through the squalor of Victorian London like vengeance incarnate, bent on his unholy war against the corrupt judge and beadle who shipped him off to the penal colonies 15 years ago, leaving his young wife defenseless against their depredations. Banks’ towering portrayal sets the standard for the rest of the cast, which measures up nicely. Quivering with power and lust, Ray A. Rochelle appalls as the fanatical Judge Turpin, whose fatherly interest in his adopted ward Johanna (appealing Jennifer Jung), Sweeney’s daughter, has skewed into sexual obsession. As Anthony, Johanna’s champion, Timothy Ford Murphy invests his boyishly romantic character with bracing manliness. Large in person and voice, Lito Villareal excels as Judge Turpin’s beadle, a Victorian leg-breaker corrupted by the power of his station.

Of course, any actress who plays Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney’s hilariously amoral accomplice, runs up against the brick edifice of Angela Lansbury’s definitive portrayal. Although a personable performer with good comic timing, Marilyn Tokuda is no exception. A gamine in a role that should be the paradigm for bloated hypocrisy, pinkly attractive Tokuda needs a new makeup scheme to emphasize Lovett’s innate ghastliness.

*

‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’

Where: East West Players, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Little Tokyo

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; no Saturday matinee this weekend

Ends: March 5

Price: $35 and $40

Contact: (213) 625-7000, Ext. 20 ; www.eastwestplayers.org

Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes