‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘A Song for Coretta’ open in Baton Rouge | Entertainment/Life

The Sullivan Theater and UpStage Theatre are opening plays this weekend, each with wholly diverse themes.

Check them out here:

‘Sweeney Todd’

Heath McNeese smiles when asked about the secret chair.

It’s the chair the barber will use to dispose of his victims after he slits their throats with a straight razor under the guise of giving them a shave.

His name is Sweeney Todd, and McNeese is directing the Sullivan Theater’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical named for the barber.

The show’s full title is “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” and it opens Friday at the theater, 8849 Sullivan Road, Central.

And those who haven’t seen a stage or movie version of this story are probably familiar with the barber’s secret chair. Once Sweeney’s done “shaving” a client, he pulls a lever, which tips the client out of a chair and down a chute.

It’s a chute that leads to Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, where her meat pies seem to have increased in volume. And, well, you can guess the rest.

“Sweeney Todd” premiered at Broadway’s Uris Theatre in 1979. The story is a combination of dark comedy, thriller and gothic horror paired with challenging music.

“First of all, everyone loves Sondheim, and I think over the last couple of years, Sullivan has taken on shows that are challenging,” McNeese said. “Last year we did ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ which typically you see on bigger stages, and we were pretty successful in pulling it off. So, I think the next big step is to see if we can take on a show that is technically challenging from a set standpoint, as well as from a music standpoint and an acting standpoint.”

The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in the 19th-century serialized story, “The String of Pearls.” He reappeared in Christopher Bond’s 1970 play, “Sweeney Todd,” which was adapted into the stage musical.

The story is set on the dirty streets beneath the eternally gray sky of London. Sweeney is rescued at sea and brought to a London dock, where he tells his rescuer his story of having been a naive barber who once had a beautiful life.

But a powerful, corrupt judge lusted after Sweeney’s wife and promptly removed him from the picture. Sweeney then wanders onto Fleet Street, where he walks into the meat pie shop owned by the widow Mrs. Lovett.

Mrs. Lovett laments the scarcity of meat for her pies. Sweeney swears to get revenge on the judge. So, the duo forms a reciprocal business, where Sweeney serves his customers upstairs, then sends them downstairs for Mrs. Lovett’s special treatment.

“As a person, I would say Sweeney is you or me,” said David Louviere, who plays the title character. “I think one of the intriguing points of this character for me is that at first glance, he kind of seems like this terrible villain — he’s something kind of far out of reach, almost like a caricature. And when people initially hear the story on the surface, it evokes a caricature of this evil man wielding a blade, just killing people on a whim.”

But Louviere learned in his high school days, when he first watched a stage production of “Sweeney,” that the barber is more than just a villain.

“If you follow the story, you’ll see he’s a lot deeper than that,” he said. “He really is. You see from the start that he’s a really good family guy. He’s the guy that everybody wants to be around. He had a wonderful wife, and he wanted to work hard and provide for his family. He loved deeply, and I think that that puts the accent on his loss. That strikes a chord with how any one of us could be one disaster away from becoming something we never thought we could become.”

Meanwhile, Gabby Cario plays Mrs. Lovett, a role she’s dreamed of playing since her college days at New York University.

“I was assigned this part for a class in college,” she said. “I love that Mrs. Lovett is not your average female lead. She’s a bit of a villain, anti-hero, and she kind of has this Lady M feel to her, where she is truly evil, but for her, it’s what she needs to do to get by. I just love the challenge of finding the humanity in her and like how I can bring that to the stage.”

Would it be a spoiler to reveal that Mrs. Lovett carries a torch for Sweeney? Probably not. But as for what happens in their partnership, you’ll have to make a trip to the Sullivan Theater to find out. 

‘A Song for Coretta’

The last time UpStage Theatre performed Pearl Cleage’s play, “A Song for Coretta,” was in 2009.

The production, which was inspired by footage of Coretta Scott King’s funeral, not only was a premiere for the company but also the state.

UpStage will open the play again on Saturday on its stage at 1713 Wooddale Blvd. Audiences will learn how King aspired to be a professional classical concert singer before marrying civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She gave up that dream to work at her reverend husband’s side when his ministry ventured outside church walls and into the streets.

King continued to spread her husband’s message of racial equality after his death by an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968, and didn’t stop until her own death in 2006. This is the point in the play where audiences join the five women in mourning outside of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

The play premiered Feb. 15, 2007, in Spelman College’s Baldwin Burroughs Theatre in Atlanta, and focuses on interaction among the five women, each from different backgrounds and experiences. 

One is a pregnant teen, another a U.S. Army medic on furlough from a tour in Iraq and yet another is a victim of Hurricane Katrina. The cast is rounded out by an older woman who knew Coretta Scott King and a student reporter from Spelman College working on a story for National Public Radio.

The line is long, and the five mourners stand at the end. Rain begins falling as the clock edges in to midnight, but the five mourners are determined to pay their respects.

Will their perseverance see them through? Find out at UpStage Theatre.