Sweeney Todd has come home to Fleet Street, or at least Short North Stage's version of it, inside a Garden Theater that has spent the past year peeling back its own layers of history. The Tony Award-winning musical runs September 24 through October 18 at the century-old High Street venue, with performances Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.
The production, as reported by WSYX, follows Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's story of Benjamin Barker, who returns to 19th-century London under the alias Sweeney Todd and is drawn into a grim business proposition with Mrs. Lovett. The station notes the show is rated R, runs roughly two and a half hours, and is based on an adaptation by Christopher Bond, with music and lyrics by Sondheim himself. The musical originally premiered on Broadway on March 1, 1979, winning eight Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book, according to a history recounted on Wikipedia.
Short North Stage's staging pairs a Broadway name with a familiar local face. Guest artist Nyla Watson takes on Mrs. Lovett after performing on Broadway in Waitress and touring nationally in Hadestown, Wicked, and The Color Purple, per the same WSYX report. Opposite her, Torrey Linder returns to Short North Stage as the title character after previously appearing there in The Prom; his credits include the national tour of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Signature Theatre's production of The Color Purple, and the first regional staging of Come From Away, WSYX reports.
A Directorial Vision Built on Sin and Machinery
Behind the production is Edward Carignan, who directed and choreographed the show, the station notes. According to reporting cited in the dossier's promotional interviews, Carignan conceived this staging around Dante's Inferno and the Seven Deadly Sins, building the concept around technical elements that include an automated barber chair for Todd's grisly work. It is a modern, imaginative frame for a story that has unsettled audiences for nearly half a century.
The show is billed as featuring professional talent from both Columbus and New York City, running four weeks at the Garden Theater at 1187 N. High St., per WSYX. Tickets are on sale now at shortnorthstage.org and capa.com, or by phone at 614-469-0939, with group sales also available by phone or email. Pricing runs from $25 to $80 for standard general admission, according to Experience Columbus, and the production also offers $20 student rush tickets and pay-what-you-want seats at the door beginning two hours before each showtime.
A Theater Still Uncovering Its Own Past
The demon barber has arrived at a venue that has been undergoing its own kind of excavation. In January, Short North Stage illuminated a new three-dimensional marquee outside the Garden Theater, giving the historic building its first permanent marquee in decades, according to WBNS-10TV. The upgrade addressed what company leadership described as a long-standing visibility problem for the venue along High Street.
Then, in July, workers renovating the theater's lobby uncovered original 1920s Vaudeville-era plaster moldings and ornamental cherubs hidden beneath layers of old paint and construction, as detailed by WOSU Public Media. The Garden Theater first opened in 1920 as a vaudeville and silent movie house, and over the following decades operated as a burlesque house, an adult cinema, and a church before Short North Stage took up residence in 2011. Some of the salvaged renovation materials from that lobby work were even recycled into percussion instruments for a recent New Music series concert at the venue, a connection Hoodline covered in its own reporting on the Garden Theater's ongoing transformation.
Part of a Milestone Season
Sweeney Todd anchors what Short North Stage is calling its 15th anniversary season, a seven-show slate that also includes Pippin, The Rocky Horror Show, Hairspray, Dear Evan Hansen, The Producers, and Mean Girls, according to the company's own season listings. Founded in 2011, Short North Stage has built its identity around producing professional musical theater inside the Short North Arts District, and this season marks a decade and a half of that mission.
The company's ambitions extend beyond its mainstage home this year, too. Short North Stage is co-producing Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol with CAPA at the historic Ohio Theatre over Thanksgiving weekend in November, continuing what has become a recurring partnership between the two Columbus arts institutions. For now, though, the spotlight in the Short North belongs to a barber, a meat pie shop, and a theater that keeps finding new stories layered beneath its own floorboards.
