Playhouse Square still haunts, enchants with 'Hadestown,' 'Sweeney Todd'

Halloween may have ended last week, but the musical macabre continues on Playhouse Square with two acclaimed hit Broadway hits returning through this weekend. 'Hadestown' The Broadway sensation "Hadestown" can be taken in two ways. On one hand, it's a mystifying boutique songfest of ethereal romance and transcending jazz/folk ballads, blending two ancient Greek myths -- the young lovers Orpeus and Eurydice and the ancient divine couple Hades and Persephone. On the other hand, it's a stupefying pile-up of metaphors and musical mashups, but so dazzling, the audience is mesmerized, anyway. Either way, the audience seems more than willing to mentally and spiritually invest in the show and particularly savor the quality of the return national tour, continuing this week at the Connor Palace Theater on Playhouse Square. Clearly, there was a lot of investment in this 2019 Tony-winning show (14 nominations and eight wins) -- and not just the financial kind. With obvious intellectual sweat, developer and director Rachel Chavkin spent years in workshops, tryouts and pre-productions to mold the music, lyrics and book/script by Anais Mitchell from concept album into an ingenious concept Broadway musical that frames a virtual Greek God soap opera as a night in New Orleans. Brilliantly redesigned by David Arsenault (simplifying the original tour sets), lit by Aja M. Jackson and costumed by Michael Krass (toning down the original 1940s feel of the Broadway original), the multifunctional stage flows from Bourbon Street to the industrial bowels of Hades. Reflecting the timelessness of setting, the aesthetics touch everything from "Ain't Misbehavin' " to "Rent." Likewise, the ensemble is a strange mix of millennials and New Orleans archetypes. The omnipresent narrator Hermes (Rudy Foster, ably filling the dazzling theatrical legacy left by Broadway original Andre De Shields) always brings the show back to its Broadway-Showbiz countenance even when it seems to be slipping back into Greek mythology murkiness. Gia Keddy, Miriam Navarrete and Jayna Wescoatt add a little syncopation punctuation to the proceedings as the ominous Fates trio, albeit looking more like Big Easy street locals than the Pointer Sisters nod of the original Broadway production. Jean-clad chorus members, who seem to be reviving the Seattle grunge movement of the 1990s, toil away in the hellish factories or sing and dance above in street-level jubilation. But what's all this for? During the rather telling opening number, "Road to Hell," the vague but impassioned story is set into motion as tragically smitten Orpheus (wide-eyed Jose Contreras) follows his soulmate Eurydice (strong yet vulnerable Hawa Kamara) from a sidewalk cafe to the underworld to rescue her from eternal damnation and the lightly lustful intentions of Hades (Nickolus Colon as the ultimate silver fox in the spirit of Barry White). Hades' wife Persephone (Namisa Mdlalose Bizana) decides to cut short her seasonal sojourn to the Big Easy and head back down to coax philandering hubby Hades back into her wifely embrace. For all the Dixieland delights, this is still Greek tragedy, so we can always guess the ending tragic ending, but as the show adroitly and pointedly reminds us through tossed-off ditties and soulful ballads, we always have hope -- even if it just hoping to appreciate the many niceties of the production, if not its damning complexities. 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' Great Lakes Theatre's smart production of "Sweeney Todd (The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)" at the Hanna Theatre on Cleveland's Playhouse Square may make one wonder that it ever began more than four decades ago as an epic-scale behemoth along the lines of, say "Les Miserables." With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a crafty book/script by Hugh Wheeler, the original production featured a vast depiction of seedy, smoky Victorian England overflowing with ghoulish singing denizens spinning a tale of a demon barber who gave his customers a bit closer of a shave than they bargained for. The gargantuan set devoured the Broadway's Uris (now Gershwin) Theatre, and the audience got its first taste of what was to become a trend in mega-musicals. A few years later, a revival of the musical did a bit of its own close shaving (a production that one comedy troupe called "Teeney Todd" in its parody of it), which nevertheless proved equally winning with audiences. A set of scaffolding that seemed to be made of bits and parts of century-old factories suggested all sorts of locales, and the cast effortlessly took on specific roles and chorus duties alike. It is in the spirit of the latter incarnation that "Sweeney Todd" has prospered in subsequent local productions, particularly the Great Lakes Theater, with local veteran musical director Victoria Bussert strongly at the helm in a return engagement she directed more than a decade ago at the Hanna Theatre. Scenic/lighting designer Trad A. Burns, simplifying even Jeff Herrmann simplified industrial London look of the first Great Lakes Theater production, nevertheless creates an entire world with but a single evocative multi-leveled set piece. Costume designer Tesia Dugan Benson adds just the right touch of leather-fetish modernity. Matthew Webb, just as he did during the first Great Lakes Theater production of "Sweeney Todd," never fails to exact the perfect pop-opera nuance from the well-orchestrated Sondheim music. As for the able cast, Mark Bedard cuts to the heart of the title role of the blade-wielding demon. But the scene-after-scene stealer is Jillian Kates as the frazzled meat-pie mistress Mrs. Lovett, who figures how to meld her business with the strange business going on in the upstairs barber shop. She's somewhat less overtly crazy than Angela Lansbury, who created the role on Broadway, but her take works rather well in this production. Great performances dominate this production, particularly Sean Patrick Doyle as the barber/elixir salesman of multiple languages -- a master of accents in song and dialogue -- and Tate Cinti, who exudes youthful winsomeness as the salesman's hapless assistant who finds a foreboding new home under the unlikely motherly watch of Mrs. Lovett. There's really no shortcoming in this production. Great performances, great direction and great production values amount to a fresh clean shave on one of Stephen Sondheim's greatest Broadway efforts. Contact Howard Gollop at howieeg@gmail.com.