I rarely (as in never) review TV or movies or plays here, because
there are plenty of people who know more about those, are better at
writing about those, and whose entire living is based on combining the
two. So I stay out of it.

That all said, I’m still in New York, and have been treated to the current production of Sweeney Todd, now playing at the Eugene O’Neill Theater.  It’s fantastic. 
Not just for the Sondheim and the great acting and the incredible
voices, and not just for the magnificent staging in which the cast
doubles as both orchestra and stage crew throughout, dazzling the
audience with multiple displays of dexterity and bravado all at once.  

It’s also fantastic for the sheer volume of saliva.

Mind you, it’s normal for actors to spew a little while they’re talking and singing.  In fact, if there’s not some spit flying about, they’re probably not doing their jobs right, pushing every word and note to the back row.

Unfortunately, I was not in the back row.  I was in the front row. 

And this production, I must say, projects more than just text and music into the audience.  This Sweeney Todd lets the audience truly feel the performers’ emotions.  Specifically in the form of tens of thousands of tiny droplets.  And the occasional splurt.

Patti
LuPone has an amazing voice.  I am in awe, honestly.  So does every
supporting player in the cast.  But Michael Cerveris, in the title
role, gives us even more.  He gives us the warmth of a wounded soul,
hidden beneath the fury of a brutal killer.  He gives us a spectacular
dynamic and emotional range.  And he gives us towering eight-foot
plumes of saliva, seemingly endless fountains of sputum leaping high
into the spotlights before cascading two and three rows into the
audience, a vertitable one-man Vegas Bellaggio water show guaranteed to
raise not just your heart but your hands in response.

It was like
watching Gallagher doing Sondheim, if the watermelon was in his throat
and got smashed every time he said the letter “B.”  (Given that he’s a barber in a bakery who butchers a beadle… oh, god.)

You will laugh.  You will cry.  You will be wiping your eyes.  But not from the crying.

You’d
think, watching a show about the slashing of throats, that the literal
buckets of blood would be the main reason to go “eeeeeeww.” 
Surprisingly, no.

Don’t get me wrong.  The show is amazing.  But by the end
of the first act, people around me were silently squirming and
recoiling, as if to minimize their surface areas, every time Cerveris
came near the edge of the stage.  After two hours, once I was finally
resigned to becoming one with the finest saliva-borne pathogens
Broadway can offer, my amazement actually began shifting away from
Cerveris’ brilliance, and onto a single odd thought: How is this man not getting dehydrated?

In the sold-out performance I saw, the entire audience stood as one at the end,
thanking the cast with a hearty standing ovation that lasted for
several full minutes.  The show is so good, in fact, that I was surprised that all 1075 of us or so weren’t spitting back on the stage in unison, just to show our appreciation.

So.  Go see Sweeney Todd if you can.  This Michael Cerveris guy is phenomenal.  I recommend seeing anything he is in, ever, for life.

But sit in the back.  Bring a towel, just in case.  And goggles.  Definitely goggles.