Midvale's 'Sweeney Todd': Good Halloween theater

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”; Midvale Main Street Theatre, 7711 S. Main St.; through Nov. 12; 801-566-0596 or midvaletheatre.com

MIDVALE — Showing spectacular bravado for a tiny theater company, Midvale Main Street Theatre has staged a no-holds-barred “Sweeney Todd.”

Written in the Grand Guignol tradition, Stephen Sondheim’s macabre masterpiece is perhaps Broadway’s most difficult show to produce well. Virtually completely sung-through, “Sweeney Todd” requires top-notch singers for its complex score who can also deliver commanding performances. The original 1979 Broadway production garnered eight Tony Awards and, after a number of famous concert and opera-company versions, the show was famously adapted on film by Tim Burton.

Midvale Main Street is to be congratulated for its valiant effort, along with its selection of a show that is musical theater’s best Halloween production. It’s revealing to see this epic production faithfully scaled down to the company's 130-seat intimate home.

At the opening “Ballad of Sweeney Todd” with its familiar phrase, “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” the ensemble players, eyes blackened and wardrobed in filthy rags, are full of foreboding despair, immediately showing the audience that this is no sunny fairy tale of a musical.

From the seven-member supporting cast to the title role, each of the 18 performers, under musical direction of Even Speer and Holly Evans, sing with crisp diction and commitment. This is accomplished despite harshly amplified, utterly terrible taped accompaniment, a deeply lamented flaw with this masterwork from a genius composer.

Demon barber Todd, the king of all melodramatic villains, is powerfully played by experienced actor Jim Dale. His Todd is fully possessed to seek revenge on the guilty as well as innocent unshaven, but shows little of the character’s pathos. The production is at its zenith when Todd duets with his nemesis, Judge Turpin (a splendid Russ McBride), in a nice-sounding, well-performed “Pretty Women.”

The showstopping comedic number, “A Little Priest,” doesn’t disappoint, as Dale is partnered with Eve Speer as Mrs. Lovett, Todd’s accomplice. Speer, in fine voice, plays Mrs. Lovett as a barrel of laughs. Yet her “Worst Pies in London,” where Mrs. Lovett first sinks her teeth into the comic role, is conversational and doesn’t foretell the show’s main plot point.