| The Sweeney Todd Comedy Hour, featuring Sutton Foster | |
| Last Edit: mikem 12:57 pm EDT 05/04/24 | |
| Posted by: mikem 12:50 pm EDT 05/04/24 | |
|
|
|
| I made a repeat visit to Sweeney Todd, having seen it about a year ago with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. bobby2 wrote recently about how Sutton Foster is hammy, but either she's gone off the deep end since then, or he was being way too nice. From the second Sutton Foster first appears, where she's chewing a carrot with her mouth open and lets the pieces fall out of her mouth, she sacrifices her character over and over again for a cheap laugh. During "The Worst Pies in London," she throws flour on Aaron Tveit, wipes her nose and then wipes it on the pie dough, picks up the whole hunk of pie dough and wipes her nose with it, makes funny hand gestures and funny voices, and generally acts like no human being has ever acted outside of a sitcom. Why is she doing funny walks during "A Little Priest" (and she's doing them while Aaron Tveit is singing, pulling focus)? Doesn't she trust the material? Her establishing her character from the onset as some silly, goofy, comedic character means that it's hard to take her seriously when you're supposed to be taking her seriously. In "My Friends," when she starts the "I'm your friend too, Mr Todd, if you only knew, Mr Todd," the audience is laughing because they've been conditioned to laugh every time she starts singing. Annaleigh Ashford certainly has been known to sacrifice character for a laugh, but she had some restraint and still painted a picture of Mrs Lovett as a complicated human being. (I never thought I'd use "Annaleigh Ashford" and "restraint" in the same sentence until now.) Foster literally does something goofy on virtually every line in a song (and plenty of times in between songs as well), so the end of the show has zero impact. She is also very mis-matched with her pairing with Aaron Tveit, who plays Sweeney extremely seriously. Josh Groban had a lightness to his Sweeney that matched Ashford's energy. Here, Foster and Tveit seem to be in two completely different shows. Foster is a very good actress. She was very affecting in Violet, and I enjoyed her work in The Music Man. I don't know what she thinks she's doing in Sweeney Todd. The show is not a comedic farce, which I would think she knows. I would think Thomas Kail knows that, too, but since he's directed both Ashford and Foster to be kind of silly, maybe he doesn't. Of course, the audience ate it all up. Thunderous applause for "The Worst Pies in London." |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: Stay Gold - Ijest22 06:42 pm EDT 05/04/24 |
| Next: | I've only seen clips online... - DistantDrumming 09:08 pm EDT 05/04/24 |
| Thread: |
|
Time to render: 0.106386 seconds.