RagTag’s ‘Sweeney’ cares only about voices

It's tiring to keep taking a hammer to the same target, but RagTag Entertainment has repeatedly demonstrated no ability to stage musicals.

Its latest victim, at the Ovation Theatre, is Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," a show that has seen better days in local high schools and colleges. It's curious, though, that the man listed as being in charge this time is Shawn Hackler, a gifted director and designer. Either Hackler fell asleep at the wheel or he didn't call the shots.

"Sweeney" -- about an insanely vengeful man who goes on a murderous rampage -- demands both expert voices and acting. RagTag seems to think that all that matters are voices.

The "set" (uncredited; always a bad sign) is a huge black serving bar with a few black chairs. Placed downstage center, the bar sometimes blocks the important action taking place upstage. Worse, it's ugly. And it tells us nothing about the world we're about to be thrown into.

David Andino, while bringing an unusually soft, wonderfully vulnerable voice to the title role, simply can't act. He freezes his face into an angry pose, as if he were wearing a Halloween mask. Ariana Miner, as Sweeney's accomplice Mrs. Lovett, too frequently sings beyond her range. She muffles her lyrics so that they're often incomprehensible. And she doesn't suggest the over-the-hill quality so necessary for the part.

Worse yet, the role of Tobias, a boyish, naive simple soul, is played by J.R. Thomas, who's made up to look like a veteran drag queen.

The script gives opportunity for clever choreography, but there's no choreography at all. The inept blocking sabotages the world's reality. The sound was sometimes painfully inconsistent and poorly mixed. And the inexcusably large number of lyrics misstated on opening night made it obvious the show needed more rehearsal.

I woke up, though, when Alex Rodin Mendoza appeared as Pirelli, Sweeney's dim-witted competitor. Not only does Mendoza have the incredible singing chops for the role, he understands how to create a character.

Maybe RagTag should make it easy on itself and just perform concerts. Calling this stuff theater is false advertising.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.