Feb 22, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information, contact:
Scooter MacMillan, marketing director
Springer Opera House
706-256-0955
smacmillan@springeroperahouse.org
Columbus, GA—2.22.2016: Thursday, the Springer opens a musical that is dripping in awards and suspense.
The much-awarded, hit thriller “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” runs at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays (Feb. 25- 27, March 3- 5 and March 10-12) and at 2:30 p.m. Sundays (March 6 and 13).
“Sweeney Todd” won 10 Tony Awards, 14 Drama Desk Awards, 9 Laurence Olivier Awards and tens of thousands of fans. Entertainment Weekly named it third in its Top 10 Greatest Musicals List.
Critics have called Stephen Sondheim’s score for “Sweeney Todd” some of the most chilling music ever written for the stage.
The story: A quiet London barber named Benjamin Barker, who was unjustly exiled and jailed for 15 years on trumped up charges, returns home, slips into his old neighborhood and assumes the name Sweeney Todd. With the help of pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, he “cooks up” a plan to exact revenge on the judge who banished him.
Adam Clough returns to the Springer after an absence of seven years. He was a hit playing Capt. Hook in “Peter Pan” in 2009 and the season before in “Carousel” as Billy Bigelow.
Kristen Metcalfe returns to the theatre where she made her professional debut after several years studying and acting in Chicago to play Mrs. Lovett. Metcalfe was a Springer Theatre Academy teacher and her Springer credits include “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,” “The Honky Tonk Angels,” “High School Musical” and “Oklahoma!”
Todd’s daughter Johanna Barker is played by Trish Epperson who has appeared in theatres all over the country in a wide variety of roles. At the Springer she has starred in “Les Misérables” as Cosette and in “Mary Poppins” as the titular umbrella-wielding, flying nanny.
The set for “Sweeney Todd” is by necessity a technical marvel. Not only must it recreate 19th century London, it also needs a slide so that Todd’s victims can drop to Mrs. Lovett’s meat pie shop below. The set was a collaborative effort between the Springer and Tim Vinson’s welding classes at Columbus Technical College and Jordan High.
For tickets or more information about “Sweeney Todd,” call 706-327-3688 or visit springeroperahouse.org or come by the Springer Box Office, 103 10th Street, between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.
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