I made my return to Fleet Street mostly due to the addition of one cast member who was set to make their Broadway Debut. That cast member being Joe Locke making his debut as Tobias. As
someone who has watched Heartstopper, I was curious to see what the young talent could bring to the stage.
What I found was basically a whole new style of production with both pros and cons when compared to this same production with its previous lead roles going to Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. In this casting, Aaron Tveit took over the role of Sweeney and played opposite Sutton Foster’s Mrs. Lovett. Tveit played Sweeney in a much more deeply brooding way. You could physically see the weight that his torment has brought him over the years as Sweeney moved about the stage. This version of Sweeney felt much more introspective. At no point did the entire theatre feel like it with filled to the brim with emotion, instead it felt like it was closely guarded and eating him alive from the inside out.
Similarly, Sutton Foster never felt like she would bring down the house with the emotion shown in her voice. She did bring the house down with her superb comedic timing, though. This Mrs.
Lovett leaned into the campiness of the role, at times going overboard with her affection towards Sweeney. This led to some hilarious scenes in which you, as the audience, got a chance
to see just how much fun Foster and Tveit were able to have as they struggled to keep straight faces. Luckily, Mrs. Lovett can absolutely be played in this style and still fit the character, but the
contrast was drastic when compared to that of Annaleigh Ashford’s portrayal.
This brings me to Joe Locke, the main reason I wanted to see this cast. This show Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is not a show that I would consider easy by any means. It is fast paced, off-kilter, and relies heavily on the choreography to keep the audience feeling uneasy. All that to say, it must be a difficult show to do as a debut. I was struck at Locke’s singing ability. I was not sure what to expect from him vocally, having only seen him in one Netflix series that is not a musical, but I was very pleasantly surprised. His voice was quite angelic and kept Tobias feeling innocent. I did not feel that in Locke’s portrayal the same sense of Tobias being broken at the end. Locke’s portrayal felt more as if Tobias was legitimately in the wrong place at the wrong time… he understood what the people saw when they found him in front of the ovens. This was a strong contrast to Daniel Marconi’s portrayal in which it felt as if Tobias had completely lost his mind and therefore was not fully aware of the implications of the end
situation of which he is found.