Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare – Review

Theatre 20's inaugural production of the new musical Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare by Joseph Aragon will inevitably call up comparisons to Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Like Sweeney Todd, it draws its inspiration from a melodramatic pre-Victorian episode (a real-life one, in the case of Bloodless) with a gritty, grimy ambience in which equally gritty and grimy characters perform vicious deeds to a disturbingly dissonant score and wickedly witty lyrics, the witnessing of which is calculated to make the average audience member question his or her own state of morality, and that of our society at large.

To say Bloodless is not as strong a work as Sweeney Todd would be to miss the point; Sweeney Todd was a full-scale Broadway musical created by some of the greatest of music theatre proponents (Hal Prince, Len Cariou, Angela Lansbury, Sondheim himself). To see it when it debuted, as I was lucky enough to do, was an unforgettable experience. Bloodless isn't Sweeney Todd, but it may be something even more interesting: the birth of a Toronto company founded by a remarkable group of seasoned musical theatre performers "to create a unique voice for modern musical theatre" while developing new works, re-imagining older ones and advocating "for Canadian composers and their unsung work".

We haven't had anything quite like that before, and in the year that Dancap Productions has called it quits, and Mirvish Productions has announced that the Princess of Wales Theatre is worth more as a condo development than as a performing arts space, this is good and timely news.

Bloodless is a taut two-hour production with a tight, focused, simple storyline about two married couples who drift into the unsavoury profession of murdering people so they can sell their bodies for medical research. The four main characters, who could have been shown as heartless ghouls, are rendered as distinct and believable human beings, with varying degrees of greed, reluctance, compassion, selfishness and stupidity at play in each one.

Eddie Glen in particular gives a noteworthy performance as William Hare, who's never more than a half-hearted assassin. Most often seen as a jovial comic sidekick, in this show Glen evokes real pathos as he finds himself the only active participant in a marriage to a woman he loves, and struggles to maintain his dignity, if not his honour, while participating in 16 murders.

Set in Scotland, with several Irish characters, the script poses accent challenges to its cast, which are mostly handled with aplomb.

There are plenty of songs, though mainly not of the type that later becomes a standard outside the show. Much of the singing takes the form of recitative rather than ballad; the few exceptions are largely parodic: a Gilbert-and-Sullivan patter song, a Scottish folk tune (perhaps the most lyrical number in the show, and sung by a pair of "prossies"), a pub ditty.

As with Sweeney Todd, one of the most crowd-pleasing numbers (and one with the cleverest rhymes) covers the difficult-to-write moment when two people decide they'll become professional killers. In Sweeney Todd it's "A Little Priest"; here, it's a song that's probably titled "Better Off Dead" (there was no song list in the program.) In general, however, the harmonies and arrangements are more interesting than the lyrics or melodies. The strongest musical moments come when the chorus assembles for stirring, jarring ensemble numbers in many parts.

There's no dancing to speak of, although the performers move adroitly around the smallish stage. The costumes are not literal interpretations of the late 1820s setting; only a couple of dresses have the appropriate lines for the period; others have the characteristic bustles that didn't appear until after 1870. Instead, most of the characters wear an assortment of clothing that fits the mood and theme rather than the precise time and place; this is not after all a BBC television adaptation.

Bloodless continues at the Panasonic Theatre until October 28. In January, Theatre 20 will present Stephen Sondheim's classic Company. An auspicious first season for Toronto's newest theatre.

Photo credit: Riyad Mustapha. Theatre 20's production of Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare by Joseph Aragon. Oct 2012. Top (left to right): Jan Alexandra Smith (Margaret Hare), Eddie Glen (William Hare), Evan Buliung (William Burke) and Trish Lindstrom (Helen McDougal).