My first thought, seeing the poster back on the weekend of my 20-year reunion was not 'that's racy stuff for high school.' My sophomore year, we did Mr. Roberts. I wore a white sheet as Owen Musser in The Foreigner the next year, almost tripped over our school's black principal during one performance because a Klan hood just doesn't afford much view.
And if you want high school kids interested in Drama, give them just a couple of racy productions and you're half way there.
But no, seeing a Sweeney Todd poster, my first though was That's some fucking hard music.
I could sing some of it, but most of it, not if someone is singing the other parts. These are not harmonies that reinforce each other, they're true and modern counterpoints that take a bizarre combination of deafness to the other parts and acute intonation to those parts to pull off. Heady stuff for high school, much headier than lines about splitting muffs or people filled with shit.
So how did this assemblage of children do with Sondheim's magnum opus?
Splendidly. Really. They didn't just do a good job for high school kids, they did a good job, period. You can tell they put a lot of work into it, but you can also tell they're having a great time with it. As big and well developed as the Drama program was when I was there, I'm not sure the kids I went through there with could have kept up with this number.
It was well worth it even though getting there just in time meant I had to wait for stand-by seating. In fact, I got the last uncomfortable folding metal chair they added to the aisles.
I may go back for another. Might even take Em, young as she is. She's enthralled with Sweeney Todd thanks to Jersey Girl, and since it lacks the realistic deaths of the Tim Burton screen adaptation, I think it might be doable for her.
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