There was a sizable and appreciative audience at the Saturday evening show of Rep’s “Sweeney Todd” at Onstage at Greenbelt 1. This member of that audience understood why. The term “world class” has been bandied about much too often that it has become a cliché. But this current production of “Sweeney Todd” certainly fits the bill. Leads Audie Gemora and Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo and the rest of the cast were up to the challenges of the difficult (to sing) songs and acting demands. Filharmonika which accompanied the performers was energetic and impeccable in timing. And of course the musical, which turns a macabre and twisted tale of a murderous barber and his unscrupulous and scruffy partner into an incongruous staple of the genre, was a pleasure to sit through, what with Stephen Sondheim’s mordant, witty lyrics and off-beat dissonant music.
I had always wanted to watch a full version of “Sweeney Todd” ever since it figured as the object of obsession of the young girl in the movie “Jersey Girl,” an otherwise unremarkable film starring Ben Affleck with his then-fiancee Jennifer Lopez in a bit role. I looked forward to the movie version, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, but while I found it fascinating, it proved to be a literal bloodbath at the hands of Tim Burton. Besides, despite acting up a storm, Depp and Bonham-Carter were no singers, and I wondered how accomplished performers would handle Sondheim’s complicated arrangements.
Still, we must be grateful for the wonderful marketing support provided by the Hollywood production. It is difficult to sell “Sweeney Todd” under conventional conditions, after all, for the idea of a musical based on the bloody exploits of “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is off-putting to say the least. But with the movie eliminating much of the queasiness factor, Repertory Philippines was at least able to market their production as a challenging piece of musical theater to stage and perform.
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LUCKILY, we have in Gemora and Lauchengco-Yulo performers who have reached the peak of their powers. Gemora may be heavier and heftier these days, but the added bulk seems merely to add to his stage presence. He commands the stage from the second he sets foot on it, and when he strides around in his barber’s coat, he lends the proceedings a manic, sexy energy.
Lauchengco-Yulo seems only to get better as she matures. Her Mrs. Lovett is a mix of minx and aging ingénue, and she communicates with the audience with a mere glance, a furtive smile, a show of leg.
The duets between the two leads are amazing, as in “A Little Priest” as they negotiate the twisted tones and clever lines of Sondheim with confidence, ease, and humor. Congratulations, too to co-directors Baby Barredo and Michael Williams for skillfully managing the proceedings onstage. I especially liked the device of using a sheet to depict the scene at the lunatic asylum, shown in silhouette and thereby increasing the dramatic tension.
My only complaint is that the stage of Onstage seemed much too cramped, especially when the chorus strides in. I felt “Sweeney Todd” deserved a full-size stage treatment. But then, as my daughter, my theater companion, pointed out, the small stage created the perfect aura of a London, a city where dreams die and blood rules, closing in on Sweeney Todd.
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THERE is even more blood in “Ninja Assassin” than in “Sweeney Todd,” which I didn’t think possible.
Blood soaks up almost every scene in the movie, splattering on walls, flying off in graceful arcs, and pooling in the guts of Raizo, the rogue Ninja played by Korean actor-singer-dancer Rain.
There are intriguing possibilities in the story of a clan devoted to the training of potential assassins who then market the skills of its “children” to clients around the world for the price of a hundred pounds of gold. Raizo, like all the other trainees, was taken in from the streets as a child and subjected to the rigorous and cold-blooded apprenticeship of their “father” who leads the Ozunu clan, one of the secretive “Nine Clans” engaged in global assassinations.
Considered a promising protégé, Raizo turns against his clan and plans years of revenge after they execute a fellow recruit whom he has fallen in love with and then demand that he execute another female recruit before he earns his full status as a Ninja assassin.
We then find him in Berlin, where he meets up with Mica Corretti, played by the little-known but charming Naomie Harris, an agent of “Europol” who uncovers the existence of the Nine Clans. What follows is a chase through Berlin and the vaguely Tibetan hideout of the Ozunu Clan where Raizo eventually gets his revenge.
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WATCHING a blood-soaked action thriller wannabe like “Ninja Assassin” for plotting and character development is like asking for logic in a triple-X rated flick.
And someone observed that not only did Rain utter but a few lines of dialogue, the entire cast said perhaps less than 50 words between them. The rest of the movie is devoted to elaborately staged fights and car chases, staged in all sorts of settings, but mostly in murky light.
The film had a promising premise, and the presence of the Wachowski brothers, here billed as producers, offers the tantalizing possibility of a marriage between “Matrix” complexity and balletic choreography and mysticism associated with Ninjas.
But the movie makers are interested neither in exploring the romance of Ninjas nor in examining their Code. So what they’ve given us is a hack-and-slash production, full of dizzying duels and heart-stopping shots of Rain’s abs. That’s about the extent of the pleasures “Ninja Assassins” offers.
