La Dolce Musto
The Village Voice
LEAVE IT TO CLEAVER
by Michael Musto

La Dolce Musto

by Michael Musto
The Village Voice
LEAVE IT TO CLEAVER
The perfect Halloweeny apple with a razor blade in it, Sweeney Todd jolts you with a loud whistle and flashes of blood-red lighting to signal each barbaric bout of throat slashing. ("You, sir, want a shave?" Sweeney himself, MICHAEL CERVERIS, leered, looking right at my terrified-assed self in the audience.) The production is a scaled-down, claustro, distanced version that's powerful, chilly, and a tiny bit out there in a way that had the critics kvelling and orgasming when I saw it. It's even better than Showgirls. Diving into SONDHEIM's most elaborately Sondheimy score, PATTI LUPONE is a fine, sardonic Mrs. Lovett, while Cerveris haunts and thrills as the lead cleaver-wielder with an ax to grind.

In an interview last Wednesday, Cerveris greeted me by saying, "I think I offered you a shave last night," and I freaked, realizing he had been targeting me after all. But I felt pretty safe since the whistle wasn't sounding and besides, the guy was talking to me by phone.

Anyway, isn't Cerveris quite the Sondheim darling these days? "If that's true, I'd be very happy," he said. "That's the most exciting thing for me—having his approval to do these shows." By "these shows," he meant Sweeney, Passion, Anyone Can Whistle, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park With George, Assassins, and everything but the kindergarten musical little Stevie probably wrote based on Aristophanes' The Wasps. Sondheim likes Mike!

The juicy roles are dauntingly demanding, but Cerveris adores 'em, feeling, "I'm not good at just showing up and getting a paycheck. In this show, if you're not singing, you're moving furniture or playing an instrument." (Or playing furniture or moving an instrument.) To play the demon barber, Cerveris learned the glockenspiel, and I assume he's now available for Bavarian weddings. And LuPone tinkles around on her own kooky instruments, making Cerveris crack, "The sight of Evita on the tuba, you can't beat that!"

Cerveris said that he and the brass-outfitted LuPone click so serendipitously that sometimes during the song "A Little Priest," he forgets they're doing it for an audience. The customers aren't always so carefree, though. At one matinee, "People were literally gasping and shrieking. When I killed the beggar woman, they cried out, 'Oh, no!' It was like what happens when you see movies on 42nd Street." Will he take the blame for any matinee ladies keeling over into the afterlife? "I should check into the legal ramifications," he said, laughing.

The guy seemed so grounded for a recent Tony winner (for Assassins—another killer role). Is he really still such a slice of humble pie? Yes, he swore, "In this business there are plenty of opportunities to be reminded of your place in the food chain. That's the beauty of Broadway." His biggest reminder was ages ago, when he was a collator and had to walk around a table with eight other unemployed actors, robotically taking a piece of paper off each stack. That's worse than moving furniture.