‘Sweeney Todd’ scary, funny, surprisingly tender

Off-Strip Productions' "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," now at the Onyx Theatre, begins on a nightmarish note and never lets up. Under Brandon Burk's direction, Stephen Sondheim's Grand Guignol musical thriller about a barber who slits the throats of his customers is scary, funny and surprisingly tender.

Burk tells the tale through the mind of a simple, hefty, common middle-age man named Tobias (played by the anything but common Troy Tinker). We begin with him in a straightjacket sitting on what looks like a death chair and faint images of apparent ghosts behind a scrim. When Tobias looks back, and we meet the angry Sweeney in mid-1800s London after a 15-year unjust imprisonment, actor Chris Mayse's mad eyes tell us there's trouble ahead. When he encounters the eccentric piemaker Mrs. Lovett (Kellie Wright), it feels inevitable that the loony pair will become a perfect, murderous match.

Mayse is a genuine figure of menace, yet when he weeps, he's movingly vulnerable. Wight is broad and over-the-top as often as sweet and maternal. When she's not the focus of a scene, it's enjoyable to watch her react to people around her. When the young Anthony (Scott Gibson-Uebele) first lays eyes on Todd's young daughter, Joanna (the cherry-cheeked Alexa Freeman), you feel the electricity that draws them close. When performer Bill Flynn makes his rounds portraying a policeman, he projects authority without a whiff of loud threat.

Overwhelmingly skilled singing comes out of nowhere, even in small roles. Michael Drake, as a snake oil salesman, is an actor with stunning comic-operetta abilities that don't seem to belong in his delicate body. When the vocals are fever-pitched and counterpointed, you feel as if the roof can't possibly sustain them. Then there are the beautifully subdued moments - such as Gibson-Uebele's adolescent ode to Joanna, as clear and unaffected moment of yearning that you'd ever expect in a tale of blood and mayhem. Gibson-Uebele helps solidify our connection to the characters' soft sides.

David Sankuer's set should up the standards for small playhouses for years to come. He and Burk have created an ingenious method for dispatching Todd's many victims. Kelli Groskopf's lights provide an amusingly gloom-and-doom atmosphere.

Burk's achievement is that he's taken a 34-year-old masterpiece and made it his own. He's a visionary. His show restores your faith in American musicals, as well as local artists' ability to do them justice.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.