Curtis Opera theatre presents Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's 'Sweeney Todd'

Classical companies around the world have produced the 1979 masterpiece for decades, but I hesitate to label it an opera. It has the scope and grandeur of one, and nearly every Sondheim score contains music that might be called operatic. But without theater-trained performers and directors, the necessary humor and tonal contrasts driving the piece often get lost.

Thriller night

That seems the case in Emma Griffin’s muddled production, which eschews the Victorian penny-dreadful aesthetic immortalized by Harold Prince’s original staging (and preserved on DVD). Instead, she introduces a potpourri of stylistic choices that fail to coalesce. The costumes (by Kathleen Doyle) suggest a grunge-steampunk postapocalyptic universe, with the chorus twitching and salivating like extras from The Walking Dead.

Oona Curley’s pulsated lighting should come with a seizure warning. Meredith Ries’s two-tiered set includes a large pastiche of a 1950s horror-movie poster on the wall of Sweeney’s tonsorial parlor, for no apparent reason. Perhaps it’s a nod to the production’s venue, the Prince Theater, which recently changed its name to the Philadelphia Film Center.

Unlike John Doyle’s actor-musician staging that played Broadway in 2005, heavily favoring expressionistic imagery and grim horror, or even Terry Nolan’s excellent production for the Arden Theatre, stylistic changes made here don’t bring much fresh insight. They merely rob the piece of the bawdy, music-hall vibe it requires, without putting anything new in its place.

That might be more palatable if the cast included singers well versed in Sondheim’s style, which demands vocal dexterity, textual acumen, and a way around double entendre. Amanda Lynn Bottoms came closest to capturing all three, in what might be the best-sung portrayal of Mrs. Lovett any of us are likely to hear for a while.

Her velvety mezzo caresses the musical line, particularly in the seductive performance of “Wait” — for my money, Sondheim’s most underrated song. She also displays a level of comfort with the role’s parlando phrases, written for barely-a-singer Angela Lansbury. Bottoms hasn’t quite figured out the part’s comic ribaldry. But the blame there belongs as much to conductor Geoffrey McDonald, whose hard-driving tempos leave little room for the humor to breathe.

Missing ingredients

Bass-baritone Vartan Gabrielian brings stentorian vocal heft to the title role, although his performance, musically and dramatically, remains one-note. He also tends to direct his singing and dialogue to the audience when he should be interacting with his scene partners. As a pair, Gabrielian and Bottoms lack chemistry.

Tenor Aaron Crouch’s voice has grown more hooded and baritonal since I last heard him. It’s an impressive sound, but not entirely right for young sailor Anthony Hope, who longs to marry Sweeney’s daughter Johanna (soprano Sage DeAgro-Ruopp, saddled with an unfortunate interpretation suggesting mental illness).

Sadistic Judge Turpin and his henchman, Beadle Bamford, get the strangest directorial take here. They’re meant to be somewhat faceless bureaucrats, their ordinariness disguising a limitless capacity for evil. Yet bass Adam Kiss plays the Judge like a panto villain, courting boos and hisses. Tenor Colin Aikins — decked out in oversized sunglasses, a flowing scarf, and an azure blouse — resembles a middle-aged divorcée from a Nancy Meyers movie.

Martin Luther Clark displays a promising tenor as Tobias Fogg, although his voice sometimes moves awkwardly through the passaggio. Lindsey Reynolds impresses as the Beggar Woman, but the character is not used to its maximum foreboding effect. Dennis Chmelensky has fun as preening, self-satisfied mountebank Pirelli.

Curtis should be commended for taking a risk — and for being willing, in general, to step outside its comfort zone with inventive productions and intriguing repertoire. But, like one of Sweeney Todd’s victims, this adaptation seems largely drained of its lifeblood.