How do you gain audience sympathy for a serial killer?
The late Stephen Sondheim pitched an answer in his 1979 Tony Award-winning musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Create a good man-gone-wrong who is a victim of injustice, and righteous vengeance will win the day.
A big production of “Sweeney Todd” will be staged at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College this weekend. Presented by the newly minted FLC Department of the Performing Arts, the production opens Thursday night and will run only through Sunday. It features FLC student performers and a pit orchestra that includes several faculty members.
Director Michael McKelvey makes his directorial debut at FLC. Last year, he joined the faculty and was invited to help create a performing arts program by merging the music and drama departments.
“When I was offered the job, ‘Sweeney Todd’ had already been picked for this year,” McKelvey said. “Of all the shows I’ve done, I know this one the best. It’s one of my three favorite musicals. I never sang the lead, but I did play the role of Judge Turpin once. I’ve also stage and music directed ‘Sweeney Todd’ and even conducted the show once.
“My other two favorites? ‘Carousel’ and one you’ve probably never heard of, ‘Never More: The Life and Death of Edgar Allan Poe.’ It’s a Canadian show that played Off-Broadway. Maybe we’ll do both here at the college – eventually.”
The fictional monster Sweeney Todd first appeared in a British penny dreadful in 1846. The story, “The String of Pearls,” described Todd, a barber, and Mrs. Lovett, a bakery owner, as petty thieves. Subsequent interpretations turned simple greed into revenge over the inequities of the Industrial Revolution. The saga of a murderous barber remained popular, and by the 21st century, playwright Christopher Bond updated the legend even further. In his 1973 play, which Sondheim saw on a trip to England, Bond interlaced themes of deceit and death with innocence, love and even humor. Bond was responsible for upgrading a Victorian monster into an abused man driven to extremes, an avenger.
Impressed with Bond’s version, Sondheim immediately started crafting a musical. It opened on Broadway in March 1979 and won eight Tony Awards. For the last 43 years, it’s been in performance somewhere. Since 1926, the story has been adapted for five feature films. The most notable was the 2007 version of the Sondheim musical featuring Johnny Depp.
Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett will be portrayed by Harrison Wendt and Siena Widen. In addition, look for Sylvia LaGalbo (Beadle Bamford), Atlee Beam (Anthony), Tayler Smith (Beggar Woman), Holden Grace (Judge Turpin), Harrison Abel (Tobias), Deanna Overby (Johanna) and Liam Hahn (Pirelli).
If you go
WHAT: “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” a Stephen Sondheim musical, directed by Michael E. McKelvey, Fort Lewis College Department of Performing Arts.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE: Community Concert Hall at FLC.
TICKETS: Adults: $16-$18; FLC faculty, staff, seniors: $10; special alumni prices Saturday show, $10. Available online at www.durangoconcerts.com.
MORE INFORMATION: Email soppenheim@fortlewis.com, visit www.fortlewis.edu/theatre or call 247-7089.
Assisting McKelvey is Musical Director Wesley Dunnagan. He coordinates voice studies in the FLC Music Department and is a recitalist and performer in opera, oratorio and musical theatre. The pit band includes three FLC professors: trumpeter Joe Nibley, violinist Richard Silvers and bassoonist Justin Hubbard, as well as student musicians. Pianist Paula Millar, a stalwart of FLC musicals, accompanies. Andrew Brackett, FLC’s technical wizard, has crafted a complex, roundtable set and lighting design, plus visual effects and a passerelle, a semicircular footbridge that extends into the audience, which McKelvey particularly wanted.
One of the bracing effects of “Sweeney Todd” is the way Sondheim and his creative team have interlaced humor into the most astonishing. Watch for the duet that ends Act I, “A Little Priest.”
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
“I’m a Californian,” Michael McKelvey said of his upbringing in Van Nuys, California. “I started out as a performer. That evolved into stage management then musical direction.”
A young voice major at Cal State University at Northridge, McKelvey completed his bachelor’s in music in 1989. He went on to Southern Methodist University for a master’s in music with additional study in vocal pedagogy. With lots of performing and directing gigs in between, he completed his doctor of musical arts at the University of Texas at Austin in 2004.
“At that time, I had started to become an opera director, but then I shifted to pedagogy,” he said.
McKelvey credits one particular teacher, Thomas Hayward, a former soloist with the Metropolitan Opera who migrated to Dallas and SMU to teach voice and opera.
“I was by far not the best singer in his studio, but I learned more from him and his studio practice than anyone else. He said: ‘Watch me work with my other students and learn,’” he said. “Well, I did, and I’ve had that open-studio policy at every school I’ve taught. It’s one way to learn and one way to create community.”
“I’m a unicorn in musical theater,” McKelvey said, indicating a heady career mix of performances, awards, honors, stage management, directorships, professional affiliations and adjudicating. Most unusual in his history is the fact that twice he’s been tenured at the university level but chose to move on (University of Pittsburgh Conservatory and St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas).
“When I saw the FLC job listing, it gave me pause,” he said. “I was in New Orleans at Tulane University and the Summer Lyric Theatre. Thirty years ago, I did Sandstone Theatre in Farmington. I performed in a show, and I played golf and loved it.
“I also know Ian Hoch, who grew up in Durango. He told me about the college and about Merely Players and Mona Wood-Patterson. I connected with the college and with Merely Players. Mona asked me to perform in the winter cabaret. I thought it was a good way to get to know the theater community here.”
At FLC, McKelvey teaches beginning acting and introduction to theater plus applied voice, directing, stage management and production. “Sweeney Todd” brings all of those skill sets together.
