The new theatre production is the famous musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The play is about a barber in 19th century England named Sweeney Todd, obsessed with revenge and murder. He kills his customers and gives them to his accomplice Mrs. Lovett to bake into meat pies. The show will premiere in the first weekend in February and deals with themes of love, loss and sanity.
“I wanted to do something darker,” director Grant Goble said. “It’s a very challenging show and I enjoy that as a director, doing things that challenge me.”
The show has been in the production phase since last year and the staff, actors and crew have worked to make this show a success.
“I love it,” senior Braden Keeter said. “You have to go to a dark place to play someone like Sweeney, but that’s why I love acting, because you get to be someone else for a little while.”
Keeter and his co-star senior Catherine Cable-Barber have been preparing to play these roles by studying the characters they will portray.
“We actually spent the first rehearsal talking to Goble about characterization,” Keeter said. “For me, the dark place is the razors. That’s how I get into character.”
The knives are just one of the technical aspects of the show. Another prop being used in the show is Sweeney’s barber chair, which sends his victims down a chute into Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop. The show also uses makeup that reflects the progression of Sweeney’s mind into madness.
“As the show progresses, the makeup begins to become darker and darker as all the characters begin to lose their minds and develop their characters,” Goble said.
One thing the cast wants the student audience to take from the show is the simple value of unity.
“This year at West has been about the whole Blue Nation thing,” Keeter said. “I want them to realize that it isn’t just sports, but that theatre is also part of the school.”
Cable-Barber, who plays Mrs. Lovett, wants people to recognize the collective effort of student involvement in the play that does not just start and end with the kids in theatre class.
“We’ve got football and lacrosse players in this show,” Cable-Barber said. “We have orchestra and band kids helping us out, so it’s probably the most unified thing at the school right now. We have people from all the major groups involved.”
The entire cast is working week after week to make sure this play is one that audiences will remember.
“It’s not a fairy tale,” Keeter said. “It’s dark. Guys will like it for the blood and insanity, and girls will like it for the drama. It’s going to be a fun show.”
