John Doyle’s production of Sweeney Todd, that originated at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, transferred to the West End and is now on Broadway, has just announced that it has recouped it $3.5m investment in New York in nineteen weeks. Part of the (comparatively) low cost of capitalizing it and running it on Broadway, of course, is that the actors double as their own orchestra; a technique born of economic necessity in cash-strapped British regional theatre has been cleverly parlayed into an artistic choice. It’s the same philosophy that has underpinned the long-running success of the revival of Chicago, that has long outrun the original staging: the physically bare staging, originated from the production’s origins as a concert staging as part of the Encores! season, has become part of its selling point, as well as useful for keeping production costs down.
Now, of course, Doyle — who has been employing variations of his actor-musician technique for years in Britain, and with wildly varying success (his jazz adaptation of HMS Pinafore as Pinafore Swing in 2004 was simply awful) — has become one of the hottest names on Broadway. Now every Broadway producer is beating a hasty path to his staging of another Sondheim show, Company, that is currently running in Cincinatti, and it looks like it’ll be a cert to transfer to New York next season.
Meanwhile, Doyle’s production of Mack and Mabel that started at Newbury last year moved to the West End’s Criterion at the beginning of April. It is no doubt gratifying that Doyle is finally being recognised internationally after so many years of regional toil, but there’s a more serious worry that live dedicated musicians — already being shown the door thanks to technological innovations like Symphonia that electronically reproduce them — will be elbowed out completely at this rate. And while it’s interesting to see a technique employed like this a couple of times, innovation will soon become repetition if it continues much longer.
