John Doyle's Production of Sweeney Todd to Open A.C.T.'s 41st Season
Sunday, August 5, 2007

Innovative, Tony Award-Winning Production of Stephen Sondheim's Masterpiece in Exclusive Engagement in San Francisco. Broadway Legend Judy Kaye to Play Mrs. Lovett.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, August 5, 2007—Dark, funny, and deliciously evil, director/designer John Doyle’s Tony Award-winning re-imagining of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is set to begin previews at American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) on August 30, 2007. A.C.T. opens its 41st season with the West Coast premiere of the production that won Tonys for Doyle (best direction of a musical) and orchestrator and music supervisor Sarah Travis (best orchestrations).

Alongside David Hess, who will play Sweeney, celebrated Broadway performer Judy Kaye will play the key role of Mrs. Lovett in San Francisco. Hess and Kaye will be joined onstage by many members of the Tony Award-winning Broadway cast. Tickets, on sale August 5, will be available in person through A.C.T. Ticket Services at 405 Geary Street, by phone at 415.749.2228, and online at act-sf.org. A detailed performance schedule can be found on the last page of this release.

An irrepressibly witty musical revenge fantasy, Sweeney Todd tells the tale of a master barber whom a corrupt judge has unjustly exiled to Australia. Sweeney returns to London with vengeance on his mind—and a well-honed razor in his hands. Doyle’s production, in an exclusive engagement at A.C.T. before it embarks on a national tour, features a multitalented cast of actors playing all their own instruments onstage.

In this visionary revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical thriller, the legendary demon barber of Fleet Street still serves up his justice vigilante-style, but director Doyle has created an edgier, stripped-down staging of Sondheim’s masterpiece. The intimate result delivers wicked pleasures in a chilling evening of theater that “burrows into your thoughts with the poisoned seductiveness of a campfire storyteller who knows what really scares you” (The New York Times).

During its initial New York run, the production met with rave reviews—not only from the press and the public, but also from Sondheim himself. “When I first wrote [Sweeney Todd],” says the composer in the New York Times, “all I wanted to do was write a horror story. Of all the productions I’ve seen, this is the one that comes closest to Grand Guignol, closest to what I originally wanted to do.”

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Doyle’s production is the impressive combination of skills the director/designer demands from his actors onstage. “Actor-musicianship is the term that’s used in the U.K.,” explains Doyle in the Sondheim Review. “I think it’s a multi-skilled way of telling a story—it should probably be called ‘all hands on deck.’” In Doyle’s approach, which the director has recently applied to his production of Sondheim’s Company—this year’s Tony Award winner for best revival of a musical—all of the music is played onstage by the actors themselves, creating an uncanny sense of directness and integrity of storytelling.

The inspired unity of presentation in Doyle’s approach, however, was anything but simple to create with a musical score as celebrated and complex as that of Sweeney Todd. Musical supervisor and orchestrator Sarah Travis was faced with an almost insuperable task in arranging Sondheim’s score for this production. Travis had to find a way to convey all of the power and subtlety of the legendary score—played by a 27-piece orchestra in Harold Prince’s premiere 1979 production—with an ensemble of only ten actors, at least some of whom must be singing and acting at all times. If, for instance, the score calls for a tuba (played by Kaye in this production), to complete a bass harmony, and Mrs. Lovett finds herself embroiled in a dramatic scene, an alternate musical solution must be found. Imposing as this task may have seemed, Travis has succeeded spectacularly. “I think what she’s done is brilliant,” raves the composer himself in the New York Times. Sondheim continues, “The variety of sounds she’s gotten out of the instruments and also the practical way in which they allow John to work with the performers onstage is extraordinary.” In Sondheim’s view, however, Travis’s constraint-based orchestrations have not only given a satisfactory rendering of the essence of the original score; rather, they have lent the play itself a significantly new emotional vocabulary. Says Sondheim, again in the Times, “What got me most about the orchestrations is what they’ve done for the play’s atmosphere. These are wonderfully weird textures.”

Even after the ink on the musical arrangements has dried, however, the work of the performers has just begun. In Doyle’s “all hands on deck” method of staging, the actors not only carry the musical score themselves, they do so without the benefit of a conductor—an almost unheard-of feat in contemporary musical theater. In a production that requires as much dynamism and versatility of talent from its performers as this one does, casting becomes its own puzzle: one that Doyle, the show’s producers, and casting agency Telsey + Company have solved with aplomb.

For the A.C.T. run, legendary Broadway performer Judy Kaye will be playing Mrs. Lovett—as well as the tuba and percussion. Kaye’s other Broadway credits include Phantom of the Opera (Tony Award, Drama Desk nomination); Mamma Mia! (Tony and Drama Desk nominations); On the Twentieth Century (Theatre World Award, Drama Desk nomination); Ragtime (Theatre LA Ovation Award); and Souvenir, A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins (Tony nomination). Kaye shares top billing with renowned actor and musician David Hess, a principal standby for the New York run of the show. In addition to his TV appearances on "Dynasty," "Dallas," "General Hospital," and others, and his Broadway credit in Annie Get Your Gun, Hess has appeared off Broadway in Lincoln Center’s Dessa Rose, Prodigal, and Love in a Thirsty Land and has been seen around the country in the first national tour of Ragtime.

Additionally, Benjamin Magnuson, Lauren Molina, John Arbo, and Diana DiMarzio from the Broadway production will return to their roles as Anthony Hope, Johanna, Jonas Fogg, and the Beggar Woman, respectively, while Benjamin Eakeley, Edmund Bagnell, and Keith Buterbaugh, principal standbys for the New York run, will be playing the roles of the Beadle, Tobias, and Judge Turpin.

While the young lovers, in the words of New Yorker critic John Lahr, have a tendency to “come off as ninnies” in the wrong hands, Magnuson and Molina give the roles “a refreshing, compelling sweetness”—a welcome contrast to the gripping darkness of Sweeney’s subject matter. Benjamin Magnuson (Anthony Hope, cello/keyboard), who made his Broadway debut in the New York production, is a recent graduate of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. Magnuson earned his first New York stage credit in a Carnegie Hall concert production of South Pacific. Lauren Molina, the second of our young lovers, also trod the boards of Broadway for the first time in Sweeney Todd. Other credits include Henry, Sweet Henry (York Theatre); Just So Stories (Theatreworks USA); Meet Me in St. Louis (Musicals Tonight!); and backup singer for Sarah Brightman (La Luna tour).

John Arbo (Jonas Fogg, bass), an internationally renowned musician, has toured and recorded for seven years as the baritone with the New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, a classical vocal quartet, and put in appearances on national television and concerts at the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, and other major venues in Europe and the Americas. Benjamin Eakeley (the Beadle, clarinet, keyboard, trumpet/saxophone) is a veteran of the national tour of Cabaret. Eakeley recently performed in Robert De Niro’s film, The Good Shepherd.

Diana DiMarzio (Beggar Woman) who made her Broadway debut with Sweeney, has appeared on TV’s The Sopranos and in Sidney Lumet’s film Find Me Guilty. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, DiMarzio recently received a National Italian American Foundation grant. Katrina Yaukey, as Pirelli, has appeared in Doyle’s Tony Award-winning revival of Company on Broadway. Other credits include the Broadway and international tour productions of Cabaret, in which she was seen as Sally Bowles. Edmund Bagnell (Tobias Ragg, violin) received his B.M.A. (summa cum laude) in May 2007 from New York University’s Steinhardt School. Recent New York City credits include Three Sisters and Bad Kids School with Barrington Stage Company. Bagnell has performed the violin at New York City’s Town Hall. Keith Buterbaugh (Judge Turpin) has appeared on Broadway in Doyle’s Company and in Phantom of the Opera. Off-Broadway credits include The Little Prince and Mademoiselle Colombe. Buterbaugh has also performed in national tours of Showboat, Phantom of the Opera, and The King and I.

The design team for Sweeney Todd includes 2006 Drama Desk Award-winning lighting designer Richard G. Jones, veteran Broadway sound designer Dan Moses Schreier, Tony Award-winning wig and hair designer Paul Huntley (The Producers, Hairspray, The Pajama Game), and makeup designer Angelina Avallone (Sweet Charity, The Light in the Piazza, The Pillowman).

Director and designer John Doyle won a 2006 Tony Award nomination, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for this production of Sweeney Todd. He has been artistic director of four prestigious regional theatres in the UK. Over the course of his career, Doyle has directed more than 200 professional productions, and for the last ten years has been an associate director of the Watermill Theatre, where he has pioneered new directions in musical theater through actor-musicianship. His work has won three Regional Theatre Awards for best production of a musical, as well as four further nominations in the same category (most recently for his acclaimed revival of Mack & Mabel). Sweeney Todd was nominated for both a Laurence Olivier Award and an Evening Standard Award and won the Whatsonstage Award for best musical revival. His revival of Sondheim’s Company won this year’s Tony Award for best revival of a musical.

For nearly half a century, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has extended the expressive possibilities of the American musical theater with music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication. A childhood neighbor of Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim made his Broadway debut as a composer with incidental music to N. Richard Nash’s play The Girls of Summer (1956). He was hired to write lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s music in West Side Story in 1957, followed by Jule Styne’s Gypsy in 1959. Sondheim made a historic breakthrough as both composer and lyricist with Company (1970), a caustic look at love and marriage in contemporary New York City. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) adapted an early Victorian melodrama with a combination of Grand Guignol gore, biting satire, and Sondheim’s most complex score yet, bringing Sondheim yet another Tony Award. Between Broadway assignments, Sondheim has written scores for the films Stavisky (1974) and Reds (1981) and contributed songs to the films The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and Dick Tracy (1990). “Sooner or Later,” written for Dick Tracy, won him an Academy Award for best song. In 1989, Sondheim was named Oxford University’s first visiting professor of drama and musical theater. In his own country, he has been honored with the National Medal of Arts.

Timed to coincide with Sweeney Todd, A.C.T.’s world-renowned conservatory presents an in-depth and entertaining course, The Life and Music of Stephen Sondheim, held 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. September 29. Space is limited. The course fee, $180, includes one orchestra ticket to the September 29 matinee performance. For more information, call 415.439.2350.

A.C.T.’s production of Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street benefits from the support of Producers Tom and Sheila Larsen and Associate Producers Robert Hulteng, Paul Mariano and Susan Chapot, and Joe and Lisa Skokan. The production is made possible by First Republic Bank, with additional support from JW Marriott and Media Partners Classical 102.1 KDFC and BART.

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KORET PROLOGUE
Sunday, September 2, 4:30 p.m. American Conservatory Theater
415 Geary Street
Half-hour discussion introducing the production. FREE, no tickets required, doors open at 4 p.m. For more information, call 415.749.2228.

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BRING WHAT YOU CAN/PAY WHAT YOU WISH American Conservatory Theater
Thursday, September 6, 8 p.m. 415 Geary Street

Patrons will be allowed to pay any amount for tickets when they donate children’s books, diapers, or coffee beans to benefit Raphael House, a shelter and support program for homeless families in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Please call 415.749.2228 for details. Patrons are limited to one ticket per donated item, two tickets per show per person. Tickets go on sale at 6 p.m. the day of the performance.

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KORET AUDIENCE EXCHANGE DISCUSSIONS American Conservatory Theater
Tuesday, September 11, evening 415 Geary Street
Sunday, September 16, matinee
Wednesday, September 19, matinee

Share your thoughts on the production with fellow audience members following the performance. FREE, no tickets required, but priority seating is given to A.C.T. ticket holders. Patrons who have attended a previous performance are encouraged to attend. For more information, please contact A.C.T. at 415.749.2228.

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OUT WITH A.C.T. American Conservatory Theater
Wednesday, September 5, 8 p.m. 415 Geary Street

A dynamic series for gay and lesbian theater lovers that includes a performance followed by a reception featuring complimentary wine and port and an opportunity to meet the actors. To order Out with A.C.T. tickets, call A.C.T. Ticket Services at 415.749.2228 and mention “Out with A.C.T.” when purchasing your tickets. Out with A.C.T. is sponsored by BV Wines.

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“THEATER ON THE COUCH” American Conservatory Theater
Friday, September 7, 8 p.m. 415 Geary Street

An exciting collaboration between A.C.T. and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, “Theater on the Couch” inspires lively dialogue between the audience and a panel of local psychoanalysts. After the show, the panel will discuss the psychological aspects of the play and take questions from the audience.

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TICKETS
Ticket prices are as follows: $22-$62 previews; $30-$73 Tue.Thu. & Sun. eves.; $37-$82 Fri. & Sat. eves. and weekend matinees. Tickets are available through A.C.T. Ticket Services, 405 Geary Street at Mason, 415.749.2228, and online at act.org.
Groups of 15 or more people are eligible for discounts; please call 415.439.2473.

PHOTO EDITORS:
Click here to download pictures of WEST COAST PREMIERE OF JOHN DOYLE’S PRODUCTION OF SWEENEY TODD

CALENDAR EDITORS, please note:

AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER
415 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
A.C.T. Ticket Services: 415.749.2228
act-sf.org

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
Adapted by Christopher Bond
Directed and designed by John Doyle

Cast: David Hess (Sweeney Todd), Judy Kaye (Mrs. Lovett), John Arbo (Jonas Fogg), Edmund Bagnell (Tobias Ragg), Keith Buterbaugh (Judge Turpin), Diana DiMarzio (Beggar Woman), Benjamin Eakeley (The Beadle), Benjamin Magnuson (Anthony Hope), Lauren Molina (Johanna), Katrina Yaukey (Pirelli).
Designers: John Doyle (designer), Sarah Travis (music director and orchestrator), Richard G. Jones (lighting designer), Dan Moses Schreier (sound designer), Paul Huntley (wig and hair), Angelina Avallone (makeup), David Loud (music director), Andy Einhord (resident music director), Adam John Hunter (associate director)

Dates:
Previews: August 30-September 2
Press Night: September 4
Last Performance: September 30

Performance Times:
Tue-Sat. @ 8 p.m. (except September 11 at 7 p.m.)
Wed., Sat. & Sun. @ 2 p.m. (except no matinee on September 12 and September 26).
Sun. September 7 and September 16 @ 7 p.m.

CONTACT:
Martin Schwartz 415.439.2418; mschwartz@act-sf.org
Janette Gallegos 415.439.2362; jgallegos@act-sf.org