NEW YORK -- Emma Thompson will tread the boards in New York for the first time, taking on the juicy role of Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's 1979 musical masterwork, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
But theater lovers hoping for a Broadway appearance by the two-time Oscar winner will have to settle for a production playing just five performances. The musical is being staged as a special event by the New York Philharmonic, running March 5-8, 2014, at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.
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Co-starring Welsh operatic bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in the title role, the show will be directed by Lonny Price, who also staged the Philharmonic's starry 2011 presentation of Sondheim's Company, headlined by Neil Patrick Harris.
Thompson's character In the gory musical thriller is the unscrupulous widowed owner of a pie shop in 19th century London, who falls for the murderous Mr. Todd and hatches a plan with him to bake his victims in pastry.
Angela Lansbury won a Tony Award for the role in the original Broadway production, while Patti LuPone also received a Tony nomination for the acclaimed 2005 revival. Helena Bonham Carter played Mrs. Lovett opposite Johnny Depp in the 2007 Tim Burton film version.
Additional casting is to be announced for the Philharmonic production, which will be conducted by Alan Gilbert. While a number of Price's past shows for the Philharmonic -- including Company, Sondheim: The Birthday Concert, Camelot, Candide and a previous staging of Sweeney Todd -- have been filmed either for theatrical release or television broadcast, no such plans have been announced yet for the upcoming event.
Thompson will hit screens nationwide on Dec. 20 as Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers in Disney's Saving Mr. Banks, which also stars Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. (Watch the trailer below.)
NEW YORK – Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim is at work with John Tiffany, the Tony Award-winning director of Once, on a radical rethink of his 1970 show Company, about a commitment-phobic 35-year-old New Yorker.
The central twist in the reconceived version -- which is currently being workshopped and will be performed for a private audience on Friday -- is that the central character of marriage-shy Bobby is an out gay man. A number of key characters will undergo a gender switch, including Joanne, the jaded boozer originally played by Elaine Stritch, who gets one of the musical's best-known songs, "The Ladies Who Lunch."
Bobby is being played in the workshop reading by British actor Daniel Evans, a Tony nominee for the 2008 revival of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George. Also in the cast are Bobby Steggert, currently in the Broadway cast of Big Fish, and Ugly Betty star Michael Urie, now appearing in the hit off-Broadway play Buyer & Cellar.
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The role originally known as Joanne will be played by Alan Cumming, who worked with Tiffany on a one-man Macbeth presented last season on Broadway.
Musical pundits often have theorized over the years that Bobby's reluctance to settle down with any of his string of girlfriends suggests the character is a closeted gay man. However, Sondheim and the late George Furth, who wrote the book for the show, have disputed that interpretation. But the composer was sufficiently intrigued by Tiffany's proposal to work with him on this new variation.
“It’s still a musical about commitment, but marriage is seen as something very different in 2013 than it was in 1970,” Sondheim told The New York Times. “We don’t deal with gay marriage as such, but this version lets us explore the issues of commitment in a fresh way.”
Sondheim has been making tweaks to the lyrics and dialogue on the project, which Roundabout Theatre Company is shepherding through development. Whether or not it moves forward to a full production will depend on the creative team and producers' assessment of Friday's presentation.
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"We have a long and rewarding relationship with Stephen Sondheim," said Roundabout artistic director Todd Haimes in a statement. "A reading of Company gives us an opportunity to revisit the musical we produced in 1995 and to work with John Tiffany, an artist we have wanted to work with for a long time. The reading provides a safe environment for our artists to explore bold choices."
In addition to Once and Macbeth, Tiffany's work as director includes the global hit Black Watch; the current Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie, which opened Sept. 26 to rave reviews; and a stage adaptation of the Swedish vampire film and novel, Let the Right One In, which opens Nov. 29 at London's Royal Court.
Originally produced and directed on Broadway in 1970 by Harold Prince, Company broke new ground for a musical in its skeptical dissection of love and relationships. It was nominated for 14 Tony Awards and won six, including best musical, running for almost two years.
The show's most recent Broadway revival was in 2006, starring Raul Esparza as Bobby. That production was filmed for broadcast on PBS. A 2011 New York Philharmonic concert staging headlined by Neil Patrick Harris was also filmed for theatrical release.
Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods is currently being filmed in London by Rob Marshall for Disney, with a starry ensemble that includes Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Christine Baranski and Tracey Ullman.
The most celebrated of contemporary American musical theater composers by a massive margin, Stephen Sondheim was the subject of extensive tributes during the past decade on the occasion of his 75th and then 80th birthdays. The recent publication of his collected lyrics in two volumes brought another wave of attention. Ditto every new entry in a steady stream of revues and major Broadway revivals of his classic shows. So it’s unexpected that despite a subject not exactly neglected of late, HBO’s engrossing feature-length documentary Six by Sondheim should feel so fresh, insightful and deeply personal.
That’s partly attributable to the intimate access of its creative team. Director James Lapine has been a key collaborator on such shows as Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and Passion; he also executive produced the documentary with Frank Rich, the former New York Times theater critic who has been a longtime friend and champion of Sondheim’s. (An exec producer on Veep, Rich set up this project at HBO as part of his deal with the cable network.)
But the documentary also is notable because it takes risks. Instead of the usual parade of laudatory talking heads and career-summation bullet points, this is a tirelessly inquisitive collage of perspectives unconstricted by chronology. Ostensibly focusing on the impulses behind six milestone songs from the composer-lyricist’s canon, it provides by extension an illuminating and surprisingly candid overview of his life and work, embracing failures as well as triumphs.
Daringly, the film contains an element likely to have some of the die-hard Sondheim faithful sputtering with rage – an inspired musical interlude directed by Todd Haynes and gorgeously shot by Ed Lachman. One of three specially filmed song stagings, “I’m Still Here” from Follies is performed by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker as a seedy lounge act before an audience of weary glamour-pusses, some fading, others closer to embalmed. Given that this showbiz survivor anthem has been belted out by every grizzled musical diva on the planet, reconceiving it as a vehicle to mine the pathos of the people hearing it rather than the one singing it was a ballsy touch of genius.
The other five songs whose genesis and creation are scrutinized in detail are “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story; “Opening Doors” from Merrily We Roll Along; “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music; “Being Alive” from Company; and “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George.
Each song reflects a specific moment in Sondheim’s emergence as a preeminent artist in his field. “Something’s Coming” serves to illustrate the importance of collaboration, written in a day by the 25-year-old lyricist with composer Leonard Bernstein to address a specific shortcoming in the way the male romantic lead Tony was registering. The song is performed with soaring conviction by original castmember Larry Kert in a 1958 TV clip.
The autobiographical “Opening Doors” provides a glimpse of the struggle for recognition as three fledgling musical-theater writers sing of their efforts to break into legitimate show business. Lapine films the song as a retro-styled Technicolor movie-musical insert, using split-screen and rear projection to capture the bright lights of Broadway and the dizzying heights of New York. As the green kids with stars in their eyes, Darren Criss, America Ferrera and Jeremy Jordan are as cute as a box of puppies (see video preview), getting an able hand from Broadway regulars Jackie Hoffman and Laura Osnes as auditioning performers. The chief delight here, however, is Sondheim himself, winking at the audience in an extended singing cameo as a cynical producer.
The other newly filmed interlude is “Send in the Clowns,” a sober moment of rueful character introspection that became Sondheim’s most widely recorded hit. Directed by Autumn de Wilde, the song is delivered as a torchy ballad by the luscious-voiced Audra McDonald, accompanied by her husband, Will Swenson, on acoustic guitar. Shot in a lighting warehouse, it’s simple and beautiful.
Dean Jones’ performance of “Being Alive” has been lifted (and remastered) from D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Company: Original Cast Album. Deftly contextualized by Lapine and editor Miky Wolf, the song acquires a searing emotional impact that prompted a spontaneous applause outbreak during the MoMA premiere of Six by Sondheim. For “Sunday,” Lapine also sticks to existing material, visually enhancing the stirring vocals of Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters and the original company with digital elaboration of the Georges Seurat painting that inspired the musical. That song, with its rapt description of the infinite possibilities presented to an artist by a blank canvas, also is a tremendously moving note on which to end the film.
Lapine is expanding and improving here on a formula he adopted in the 2010 Broadway revue Sondheim on Sondheim, which primarily entrusts the composer to speak for himself. This time, however, the subject reflects not just with hindsight but also as his career is evolving, via conversations taken from various decades with interviewers including Diane Sawyer, Mike Douglas, David Frost, Larry King, Andre Previn, Tony Kushner and Adam Guettel.
A jigsaw graphic is occasionally incorporated, which fits not only with Sondheim’s well-known fascination for puzzles but also with the approach adopted by Lapine in examining his subject’s achievements and impact. The wealth of archival material collected -- much of it taken from television in the days before Broadway shows were regularly filmed for library use -- is extraordinary. One fun touch is a YouTube montage of “Send in the Clowns” performances, spanning from the smooth (Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand) through the tender (Carol Burnett and Judi Dench) to the campy (Cher and Patti LaBelle), the latter hilariously mangling the song with her vocal grandstanding.
The affecting arc that emerges takes Sondheim from pupil to teacher. He found refuge from his unhappy childhood and difficult relationship with his divorced mother by becoming a surrogate son, and eventually, an apprentice to Oscar Hammerstein II. Much later on in the journey, Sondheim is shown giving master classes to conservatory students in London.
To longtime fans, much of this material and many of the anecdotes will be familiar. But folded together in this wide-ranging assembly they make for an emotional appreciation of a singular artist. And given the circumspect attitude toward love evinced in so many Sondheim songs, it’s touching to hear him open up about his own feelings. That applies whether it’s his first serious relationship at age 60, or his profound affection for and gratitude to his late mentor Hammerstein, memories of whom still bring tears to his eyes.
