“Sweeney Todd,” one of Stephen Sondheim’s biggest, most operatic Broadway musicals, takes on a lighter tone, sounding almost like chamber music, in Ray of Light Theatre’s unusual and rewarding production onstage at the Eureka Theatre. Instead of the typical shrill factory whistle, amplified orchestra and overamplified singers, five musicians seated onstage present the complex, ravishing score in a way rarely heard today, as the trend has gone toward blasting the audience.
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Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 “Assassins” is a uniquely bizarre musical about plots against presidents, from John Wilkes Booth on. It highlights the dark side of the American dream for fame and success, and does so with black humor that skirts the uncomfortable. For those brave enough to produce the play, it is a huge challenge.
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Ray of Light Theatre opened its ninth season of San Francisco community musicals with “The Who’s Tommy,” presenting the groundbreaking rock opera in all its glorious wackiness.
Nearly four decades after the tale of the fall and rise of a deaf, dumb and blind pinball player premiered, the show is as outrageous, puzzling and compelling as it was in rock ’n’ roll’s younger days.
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