In a season announcement full of tempting titles, the final show of the Theatre Company’s 2015-16 season stands out just the same:
“Sweeney Todd. By Stephen Sondheim… Musical Adaptation by DeVotchKa.”
Theater doesn’t truck in spit-takes quite as much as film (too messy). Still it is a fine, even thrilling, surprise to see that the locally sourced rock luminaries will be taking on the living legend’s dark and bloody musical.
The has created film scores (“Little Miss Sunshine”) and at shows at Red Rocks. But they began their career in theater, sort of, as a backup band on the burlesque circuit.
“I think Stephen Sondheim picked us out of all the bands in America,” DeVotchKa’s Nick Urata said on the phone in a deadpan. He was joking. But Sondheim did indeed listen to the quartet’s music and give his blessing to them adapting his score.
And news of “Sweeney Todd” might have been a “saving the best for last” proposition (the musical opens in April 2016)were the eight-production season not representative of the company’s ongoing commitment to both please and tease, satisfy its discerning faithful and seduce curious newbies.
Things begin beguilingly with “Lookingglass Alice,” a circus-tweaked, acrobatic retelling of the Alice in Wonderland tales. That show, opening in September, will be followed by Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” and “Tribes,” by British playwright Nina Raine. New York Times critic Ben Brantley called the work about a deaf son’s place in a dysfunctional Jewish family “a smart, lively and beautifully acted new play that asks us to hear how we hear, in silence as well as in speech.”
The company’s “A Christmas Carol” ends 2015 on an exquisite note of “bah” and “humbug” and “You there, boy, what day is it?”
As compelling as they were, February’s Colorado New Play Summit readings eluded attendee consensus. Not a bad thing. But it will make it even more interesting to see what shape the two plays picked for full productions — Tanya Saracho’s “Fade” and Theresa Rebek’s “The Nest” — take before their world premieres in early 2016.
Of the season’s upcoming offerings, Robert Schenkkan’s “All the Way” feels particularly timely — and is likely to remain so — in light of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the movie “Selma.”
The drama about President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s political machinations to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed won the Tony in 2014. “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston shed his Walter White persona for a truly savvy and fierce character.
This production continues the relationship the theater company has with Schenkkan, whose musical about Jesus Christ’s disciples, “The 12,” with a score by Neil Berg, opens at the end of the month in the Stage Theatre.
As for the “Sweeney Todd” and DeVotchKa pairing? Not unlike the Denver Center’s commitment to the Kent Haruf “Plainsong” trilogy, it’s the kind of collaboration that teases the roots of the homegrown without becoming provincial.
“I love DeVotchKa’s music and have for a while and I’ve gotten to know several band members over time because they come to theater,” said Kent Thompson, the theater company’s producing artistic director “But I felt it was about picking out the project that would be really interesting for them to do and for us to do.”
More opera than musical, “Sweeney Todd” seems suited to the band, Thompson believes. “It’s wildly popular still, but the blend of their music and their aesthetic — whether its Eastern European gypsy to rock to classical all the ways they go — really would help underscore the kind of bloody humor of ‘Sweeney Todd’ and bring such a new energy to it,” he said.
“I will say that most of them have said they’re interested in getting their throats cut by Sweeney Todd.”
Thompson told them it could be arranged.
Tickets are available to new and renewing subscribers beginning March 16 at denvercenter.org or by calling 303-893-6030 or 303-893-4100. Single tickets go on sale to the general public Aug. 10.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
