[Colorado-talk] Join us to see something a little different: Sweeney Todd and DeVotchka on May 1 at Denver Center for the Performing Arts

Thu Apr 14 17:45:02 UTC 2016

April 14, 2016

The Mile High Chapter will be attending the new Sweeney Todd<http://www.denvercenter.org/shows/specific-series/Get?Id=6341bdd2-0de1-473f-a55f-c2ddddb5c02e> play at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, May 1 at 1:30 p.m.  The tickets are $35 each.  We need to know soon if you are interested because not many seats available.

Below is an article from the New York Times explaining how Colorado's own DeVotchka added their touch to the music of Sondheim.

Email lriddle at cocenter.org<mailto:lriddle at cocenter.org> if you are interested.
DeVotchKa Adds an Indie Touch to 'Sweeney Todd'
By LISA KENNEDYAPRIL 6, 2016

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/10/arts/10SWEENEY1/10SWEENEY1-blog427.jpg]
Jeanie Schroder, Tom Hagerman and Shawn King of DeVotchKa. Credit Morgan Rachel Levy for The New York Times
DENVER - Seventeen performers stand in a half-ring behind a nine-piece orchestra in a rehearsal studio at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts<https://www.denvercenter.org/about-us/theatre-company>. They are belting out the menacing notes of the opening number in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's tale of revenge and madness, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."
When the orchestra lands its final note - with a sharpness worthy of the razor-wielding protagonist - the company bursts into whoops and applause. It is the first time the vocalists have rehearsed with the musicians - the first time they've heard the new orchestrations arranged, as unlikely as it seems, by the indie rock band DeVotchKa<http://devotchka.net/>.
"When we hit that last note and they screamed it seriously felt like eight months of tension was doused with the emotion from all these actors," said DeVotchKa's percussionist, Shawn King, who along with bandmates Tom Hagerman and Jeanie Schroder, arranged the score and will play in the pit. "Until this moment, I felt like, 'Are we doing the right thing here? Was it a good idea?'"
Many a theater company lately has done more than merely attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, to quote the show's opening salvo. They've tweaked one of Mr. Sondheim's most diabolically crafted, technically demanding musicals, aiming in some cases to reach beyond the traditional - and aging- theater audiences while honoring one of its masters.
An all-male "Sweeney" was performed early this year in California. Last August, Landless Theater Company in Washington debuted its prog-metal adaptation,<https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/attend-the-tale-and-turn-it-up-new-prog-metal-todd-premieres-in-dc/2014/07/31/44c57242-0d0d-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html> working with the score Mr. Sondheim took a scalpel to for Tim Burton's 2007 film adaptation<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_hgrfZVlJA>. (That stage version will get a reprise in July at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington.)
Photo
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The orchestra and cast of "Sweeney Todd" rehearsing in Denver. Credit Morgan Rachel Levy for The New York Times
All of these came in the wake of the most eye-opening "Sweeney" redo of all: the director John Doyle's much heralded, scaled-down 2005 Broadway revival, <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/theater/reviews/grand-guignol-spare-and-stark.html> which found the actors playing their own instruments, including Patti LuPone as a tuba-tooting Mrs. Lovett.
To rework the orchestrations for the show's Friday, April 8, debut, the Denver Center needed Mr. Sondheim's approval. (So did Landless for the metal version.) That they got it suggests that the notoriously exacting composer is open to experimentation.
"Whenever I appeal to anybody under 50, I feel a triumph, seriously. Seriously!" he told Billboard magazine in the fall. (He was otherwise unavailable for comment.)
Mr. Sondheim's blessing came with caveats: The melodies and structures of the songs needed to remain intact, though instrumentation could change.
Kent Thompson, the director, cast performers with Broadway heft, starting with Robert Petkoff<http://robertpetkoff.com/> ("Ragtime"<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/theater/reviews/16ragtime.html>) as Sweeney and Linda Mugleston ("On the Twentieth Century") as Mrs. Lovett.
But bringing in DeVotchKa raised the stakes. The band comes with its own identity, its own fans. Because of the group's fondness for accordion, mandolin and other folk instruments, DeVotchKa has been called a Gypsy band. But their albums can hurtle from the old-world melancholy of a squeezebox to the furious strumming of guitars mixed with horns.
In 2007 the Colorado-based group earned a Grammy nomination for its soundtrack to the movie "Little Miss Sunshine." That year Rolling Stone called them "The Best Little Grammy-Nominated Band You've Never Heard Of."
In 2012, DeVotchKa performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at Red Rocks Amphitheater, the outdoor venue in the foothills near Denver. An album of the concert was released in 2013. "We wouldn't have been invited to do this if Tom hadn't arranged all our songs for the symphony,'' Mr. King explained. "It just kind of opened up everything."
Emily Tarquin, the Denver Center's artistic associate and a longtime fan of the group, recalls listening to that album and being struck by one song: "I just started to hear the 'Sweeney Todd' opening - whether that's true or not - I felt this was such a good fit."
"When Emily brought up DeVotchKa and 'Sweeney,' I said 'Oh, that sounds cool,' '' said Mr. Thompson, who knew the band's music and had seen Mr. King at various theater events. "I listened to their albums again, watched some clips on YouTube, was struck by their theatricality, came back and said 'That sounds cool.'"
Photo
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A costume rendering of the character Mrs. Lovett in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts production of "Sweeney Todd." Credit Kevin Copenhaver
The bandmates have composed parts for many instruments that define their sound. Mr. King is nearly walled in by drums and a glockenspiel. Ms. Schroder moves between tuba and sousaphone, double bass and flute. Mr. Hagerman plays strings. There's a mandolin, a guitar and a toy piano. They enlisted a friend to play the bandoneon.
The arrangements that have resulted can be subtle. They can also be quietly hilarious. Mrs. Lovett's meat pie ditty "A Little Priest" arrives with a dash of oom-pah-pah. And during rehearsal, Mr. Petkoff began doing a bossa nova in response to the snare drum rhythms Mr. King was teasing beneath "By the Sea."
As accomplished as the DeVotchKa band members are, though, they recognize they are playing Sondheim, the most lionized theater composer alive. "'Sweeney Todd' is so well done, to jump off of it too much is you trying to be clever," said Mr. Hagerman.
Still, he believes the band has stayed true to its sound while honoring Mr. Sondheim. "'Sweeney Todd' oozes so much of the same sort of musical DNA that has influenced much of what is DeVotchKa,'' he explained. "It's sort of the same DNA that shows up and influences the music of folks like Kurt Weill or Tom Waits or Dresden Dolls."
"Sweeney Todd," however, is missing one of DeVotchKa's signature instruments: the lead singer Nick Urata's keening, melancholy voice. The singer-guitarist has grown increasingly in demand for film work, including recent scores for "Focus" and "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot." He'll rejoin the band in the studio to work on its next album the day after "Sweeney" closes.
The startling violence in "Sweeney" - which arrived on Broadway in 1979, well before "Game of Thrones" or "The Revenant" - may be why it is being revisited with such creative vigor these days.
"So much of entertainment today - TV, plays, films - have embraced these dark, different kinds of aesthetics," said Mr. Thompson, who is also producing director of the Denver Center's theater company. "Sondheim was ahead of his time."
Ticket sales suggest audiences agree. The first two weeks of the run are 90 percent sold. A program for patrons under 30 has seen its best numbers yet.
The band members admit it took time to get used to the musical's bleak worldview. (This even though they took their name from Anthony Burgess's malevolent novel "A Clockwork Orange.") The show is "definitely darker than anything we've ever done," Mr. King said. "We did a cover of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' for a tribute record. But it's the 'Nightmare Before Christmas' - it's adorable."
To their bemusement, the DeVotchKa trio have been fitted for costumes and will appear a couple of times onstage. The other day they got a lesson in stage blood. They were also introduced to the intricacies of Sweeney's barber's chair - the one that leads to a chute were Mrs. Lovett can make meat pies of the dead.
"We are going to be murder victims," Mr. King said, with glee.
A version of this article appears in print on April 10, 2016, on page AR10 of the New York edition with the headline: The Demon Barber's Apprentices.

Lorinda Riddle
Coordinator of Special Projects
National Federation of the Blind
 of Colorado (NFBCO)
www.nfbco.org<http://www.nfbco.org/>
2233 W. Shepperd Avenue
Littleton, CO 80120
303-778-1130, ext. 236
720-384-5871 Cell phone
lriddle at cocenter.org<mailto:lriddle at cocenter.org>

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