Josh Groban and the return of “Sweeney Todd”

He’s the new “Demon Barber of Fleet Street” … and Josh Groban simply realized learn how to give a detailed shave. He in fact took barber classes:  “I did! I wanted the shaving community, should they come to this show, to be really impressed,” he mentioned.

He demonstrated for prepared topic Anthony Mason: “We would start with the neck maybe. And then we would turn and we would do your cheek this way.”

“Is there an art to these decisive strokes?” Mason requested. 

“I’ve been winging it! This is where the improvisation of theater comes in!” Groban mentioned. “I’ve never given anybody an actual, like, sharp razor shave. We’ve enjoyed you on television for a long, long time. Thank you so much for spending your final day with us here.”

“This is where I say my last words?” 

“That’s right. Captured in high def!”

In “Sweeney Todd,” the new Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s iconic musical, maximum of his shoppers do not live on.

“You’re not known for playing Evil,” mentioned Mason.

“No, I’m not,” Groban mentioned. “Which is part of the fun.”

As Sweeney, Groban has a co-conspirator: Annaleigh Ashford performs Mrs. Lovett, who sweetly disposes of Sweeney’s sufferers in her meat pies. “On top, she’s just a bubbling, bubbling, bubbling little pot of magic,” Ashford mentioned. “And underneath, it’s this stew that’s extremely complicated.

“You know if you find yourself taking part in Iago, you do not know you might be the dangerous man. And in order that’s at all times type of the manner that I’ve considered Mrs. Lovett: She does not assume she’s dangerous, she’s surviving. Mrs. Lovett at her core is a survivor. And she wishes Sweeney Todd, as a result of she’s a girl in a person’s international.”

The authentic 1979 manufacturing, which starred Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, and Len Cariou as Sweeney, received 8 Tonys. The not likely inspiration for the musical used to be a gloomy Victorian melodrama, however Sondheim “thought it could sing.”

Groban mentioned, “The elevator pitch to something like this in 1977, you know, would have been something like, ‘Well, have fun with that, Steve! Enjoy!’ I’ll never forget when Tommy Kail told me at an ice hockey game, ‘You know, you should really come to this workshop I’m doing. It’s about Alexander Hamilton and it’s a hip hop musical.’ I go, ‘Is it comedy? What’s …?’ And I’m kinda saying, ‘Good luck with that, you know? Can’t wait to see it. Sure it’ll be great!'”

Thomas Kail, the Tony-winning director of “Hamilton,” is now directing “Sweeney Todd,” simply throughout the side road from “Hamilton.” Mason requested him, “You directed what’s still the best-known show on Broadway, right over there. How does this compare to that?”

“This was a huge source of inspiration,” mentioned Kail. “This is a show about a misunderstood person, and the world is trying to figure out why he did what he did. The show on the other side of 46th Street doesn’t happen unless there’s ‘Sweeney Todd.'”

The comedian reduction in “Sweeney” comes with a cockney accessory: Mrs. Lovett. “It’s like speaking another language,” mentioned Ashford.

She were given pointers from the display’s British choreographer: “Every once in a while he’ll be like, ‘It’s badge. It’s badge, not budge. Badge.’ You know, I’m like standing backstage going, ‘Badge budge, badge budge, budge.’ My little boy hates it. He’s like, ‘Will you please stop doing your British accident?’ And I’m just not correcting him because I think it’s too delightful.

“I’ve a six-and-a-half-year-old boy; the closing time I used to be on degree doing 8 displays per week, he used to be now not even six months outdated.”

“Which additionally should had been actually arduous,” said Mason.

“Oh, it used to be actually difficult,” Ashford said. “I used to be nursing. I’d run off after Act One, at intermission, pump. It’s simply all about milk. Eight displays per week, and milk.”

The last time Groban was doing eight shows a week, the singer was making his Broadway debut, nearly seven years ago, in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” He called that experience “the happiest I’ve ever been in my profession.

“I was a theater kid that hit a fork in the road when I found my way into the music biz. That was not something that I had dreamed of in my bedroom when I was 10 years old; it was this.”

Watch this 2016 “Sunday Morning” record on Josh Groban’s Broadway debut in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812”: 

It used to be Groban’s supervisor who advised he play Sweeney. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I’m not old enough to do [that].’ And he’s like, ‘Dude, you’re 41!’ My God, that IS old enough!” [He turned 42 the day “Sunday Morning” spoke with him.]

The manufacturing had its first run-through a year-and-a-half in the past, Groban recalled: “And Sondheim was going to be there. He was excited. And two days before we were to do that run-through, he passed away.”

“Did you think at first, in that moment, that this wasn’t gonna happen now?” requested Mason.

“Well, there was a lot of conflicting emotions, because the first one, of course, was just grief,” he answered.

Sondheim have been a fan of “The Great Comet,” and he and Groban had develop into buddies: “He said to me when we hung out once, ‘I’m not gonna tell you when I come to the show. I’m gonna do you that solid. I’m not gonna tell you.’ ‘Thank you, Steve!’ And then of course at intermission, the group text is, Red alert! Red alert! The maestro is in the building!”

In the finish, Groban and corporate went forward with “Sweeney Todd,” to honor Sondheim – and additionally as a result of the famous person obviously enjoys giving a detailed shave.

To watch a preview of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” click on on the video participant beneath:

      
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Story produced via Mary Raffalli. Editor: Steve Taylor.

     
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