INTERVIEW: John Rapson utilizes horror history for his ‘Sweeney Todd’ role
Photo: From left, Jamie Jackson and John Rapson star in the Broadway production of Sweeney Todd. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
John Rapson loves Sweeney Todd, the delightfully devilish musical by Stephen Sondheim. This is not mere admiration. Rapson really loves Sweeney Todd.
The accomplished actor points to the mega-show as his favorite musical of all time, and he knows what he’s talking about. After all, not only is Rapson currently appearing as the villainous Beadle Bamford in the current hit revival of Sweeney Todd on Broadway, but he’s actually an alum of the much-heralded off-Broadway version that played the Barrow Street Theatre a few years back. Memories of that unique take on Sweeney Todd, where the audience sat in an actual pie shop, are only eclipsed by the gargantuan wonders achieved by this latest incarnation. The new Broadway revival stars Josh Groban in the title role and Annaleigh Ashford as Mrs. Lovett. Thomas Kail directs the company.
“For me, this was great,” Rapson said in a recent phone interview. “I had done the production at Barrow Street, the kind of well-known production that was set in a pie shop, brought over from the West End and before that the Tooting Arts Club in the UK, which was a phenomenal experience. I think somebody involved had seen me do the role in that, and so I came, and I did the reading. It was an unbelievable group of people working on what has, for me, always been my favorite show ever.”
After the reading, Rapson received a phone call asking him whether he wanted to become Beadle Bamford once again. He freely admitted to weeping after the call because he had just been offered a chance to appear in this beloved show on Broadway. His time at the Barrow Street Theatre had come to an end, but it turned out that that experience wouldn’t be a once-in-a-lifetime gig.
As the revival prepped for Broadway, an unexpected and most unwelcome development occurred. Sondheim, the poet laureate of American musical theater, died. Bamford remembers that the composer was supposed to be at a reading of Sweeney Todd only a few days later. “We were all excited to be meeting with him and asking him questions and having him in the room,” the actor said. “It was very strange, but also very beautiful. We came together and celebrated him and just made it about the work rather than about the grief or the sadness of losing him or anything like that. I think it ultimately paid off and began this incredible journey.”
When Rapson was a child, he loved the horror genre. He was intrigued by ghosts, monsters and all things that go bump in the night. His second love was theater, mostly because his parents were dedicated to exposing him to the art form.
“When I discovered this show, as silly as it is, it was sort of like, oh my God, I can have both,” he said. “Lo and behold, I find that there are a lot of people in the theatrical world who love the darker side of things and also the respect that is out there, which I completely echo, for this unbelievable score and realization of this legend. It’s completely unmatched. It is the height of excellence and specificity and writing, Venn diagrammed with theatricality and almost campfire-like storytelling.”
He added: “I’m always struck by the fact that the show begins with these three words that do basically everything for you. … Somebody steps forward and says, ‘Attend the tale,’ so we know that we’re going to be watching a legend. We’re going to be watching something that probably isn’t real. ‘Attend’ immediately makes it feel like we’re in a different time period. It makes it feel like we all need to draw closer and collectively breathe and experience this together, which is also what a great thriller or a great horror film does for you. And I think that this show is somehow at the top of both forms of thriller and musical theater, and to me that is a perfect combination.”
Rapson, a graduate of the University of Michigan, said that the cast members around him at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre are phenomenal and eclectic, with everyone joining the company with terrific respect for this unforgettable material. For the unbeknownst, the show is centered on the character of Sweeney Todd, the so-called demon barber of Fleet Street. He has many secrets behind his brooding eyes, and he’s returned to London to exact revenge and settle old scores. He accomplishes his bloody feats with the razor he holds in his hand as a barber. Helping him with these dastardly deeds is Mrs. Lovett, the proprietor of a run-down pie shop. Together, with a bit of cannibalistic glee, they dispatch victims left and right.
This is not Sweeney Todd in modern dress or Sweeney Todd in an intimate pie shop. This is Sondheim’s vision writ large on one of the largest Broadway theaters in New York City. “We’re going to do Sweeney Todd as big and grand and gothic as a score like this deserves and as has not been seen on Broadway since 1979, and so to do it like that is so rare,” Rapson said, with fanboy pride. “It never happens anymore, and it certainly never happens on Broadway budgets and scales that you get in 2023.”
Rapson’s specific role of Beadle Bamford is a memorable one. He’s one of the chief villains of the piece, which is saying something because most of the characters in Sweeney Todd have various shades of villainy to their persona.
“In a show full of bad people, I have the honor of playing one of the very worst,” said Rapson, who has also appeared in Les Misérables and Between the Lines. “It’s funny because he’s a supporting character in the show, and yet I feel like I could play him for 20 years and find something new because the writing is so good. … A lot of it comes from personal history. A lot of it comes from having that horror background. I bring a lot of Vincent Price and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and those kind of guys from Hammer Films who often played hilariously stuck-up or obsequious villains … combined with what I have learned from playing him before for a significant period of time, and what I glean from the humor and my own experience with the show and how the show works. All those things come into effect. You steal. You steal and you borrow from performances that you’ve liked, not necessarily of this character or even of characters like him, but all of these separate elements that surround you in your own personal history that can combine and create the person that you see on stage.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Sweeney Todd, featuring John Rapson, continues at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
