Sweeney Todd (4*)

When Patrick mentioned he'd already seen Sweeney Todd--reduced in his mind to Patti Lupone carrying a tuba, 15 years earlier--I said he needed to see a "full" production and that Grayson probably would enjoy it, too.  Little did I realize he would ask me to join them when the Times favorably reviewed the new production starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford.

Sweeney Todd looms large in my nostalgia universe.  I took David, an aspiring set designer, to see it at the Uris Theater (now the Gershwin, Broadway's largest) for his 25th birthday. We both were blown away by the huge production, the music and Angela Lansbury's iconic performance as the Cockney shrew who made cannibalism indescribably tasty.  Barnet, my tutor in the world of Sondheim musicals, loved the show so much he named one of his cats after the title character. I took the original cast recording on cassette to Alaska in 1980, knowing my father would soon be singing "Not While I'm Around" right along with me.  I also savored Tim Burton's appropriately dark film adaptation, particularly Sacha Baron Cohen hamming it up as Adolfo Pirelli, Sweeney's entirely deserving first victim.

All this by way of saying my expectations were impossibly high.  But while the vocals couldn't have been better--including Jordin Fisher's thrilling baritone--and Ms. Ashford's lewdly funny stage business nearly erased the memory of Ms. Lansbury, the audience, of all things, nearly spoiled the evening.  Although they were all American Express card holders, it seemed as if many had never been inside a Broadway theater before.  And not because of their phones, my usual pet peeve.  Perhaps the 7 p.m. curtain might excuse some of the latecomers, but even more people returned to their seats long after the intermission ended.  Most egregious was a disabled woman whose struggle to step down to the lower balcony seat obscured our view of the stage for at least 10 minutes during the early part of the first act.  Call me unsympathetic, but if navigating a Broadway theater without an elevator is a problem for you, shouldn't you arrive as early as possible to minimize the disruption you may cause others?

But if you've never experienced the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, I'm sure the bloodletting and the incomparable music--particularly if you're a Bernard Hermann fan (he scored Psycho, among many other Alfred Hitchcock films)--will impress you as much as it did me 44 years ago, when audiences knew how to behave.