Dan Uggla is a second baseman for the Florida Marlins.  He is normally an outstanding baseball player.  Uggla is partially famous, though, for his poor showing in the 2008 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, where he made a record three errors and struck out three times.  If you’re not a baseball fan, I can tell you that’s an embarrassing night.  Even after that misery, his team will pay him more than five million dollars in 2009.

Ozzie Smith was possibly the best defensive shortstop in the history of baseball.  Smith – also known affectionately as the Wizard – still made 281 errors during his long career, no doubt disapointing at least one starry-eyed kid at the ballpark on each of those days.  Moreover, Rick Ankiel currently plays outfield for the St. Louis Cardinals, but he’s primarily famous for three appearances – in his former role as a pitcher – in the 2000 playoffs.  It was over this stretch that Ankiel unexpectedly and completely lost control of his pitching arm, walking four batters and throwing an incredible five wild pitches in a single inning.  If you don’t know, it all worked out; Ankiel is set to make almost a three million dollar salary in 2009.

Which leads me to the Red Mountain Theatre Company’s production of Sweeney Todd.  During the show, I’d written at least three times in my notes about the excellence of Tam DeBolt as Mrs. Lovett.  For example, I wrote “legitimately good and funny” and “funny and creepy all at once” and “Lovett has these great ‘crazy eyes’ . . . her with Todd are always good scenes”.  Then, without warning, she may have made the theatrical equivalent of three errors in a single ballgame.

During a scene alone onstage with seventh grader Austin Russell, there was a slight pause.  I may have witnessed the flash of real terror in Russell’s eyes before DeBolt quietly exclaimed something like, “I’m dumb,” and then interrupted the performance to ask the notably excellent live musicians if they could go back.  After a short off-script discussion between the front and back of the stage, there was a legitimately genteel and touching moment where she revealed to the audience – and reassured Russell with a jaunty bop on his nose – that the mistake was her fault and that she’d given him a misplaced cue.

I’m sympathetic because I’ve been there.  If I close my eyes, I can recall the high-geared, whirring terror I experienced on the high school stage when the girl across from me couldn’t deliver her next line.  But whatever that show was didn’t involve the added difficulties of live music, singing, Sondheim, and working with a seventh-grader.  I can just imagine a professional’s thought-process – all in a split-second: Did I?  Yes, I did.  Oh!  No!  What’s he doing?  Does he know?  Can I fix it?  Will he fix it?  Can I talk over it?  Around it?  Should I stop him?  Stop it?  No, don’t stop the show.  But…  But…  Damn.

Unless somehow typical, the point here shouldn’t be her mistake.  The road to genius can be like a cruel game of Chutes and Ladders – rife with uncomfortable ways to slip down to merely “human”.  If you don’t play, you can’t ever mess up or embarrass yourself.  That’s true.  But you’ll never be granted an opportunity to win over an audience.  Even if you can only squeeze in four-fifths of a superlative performance before that fragile spell gets broken, that’s far better than most.  DeBolt’s long acting biography speaks for itself: “recently seen on the RMTC stage as “Florence” in the female version of The Odd Couple. . . . Beauty and the Beast (Mrs. Potts), Tinyard Hill (Aunt May), CHICAGO (Mama Morton), Song & Dance (Emma), BAT BOY – The Musical (Mayor Maggie) and Gypsy (Mama Rose). . . . Regional theatre credits: Steel Magnolias (M’Lynn), Falsettos (Dr. Charlotte) and The Music Man (Mrs. Paroo).”

A lesson to be learned from an unlikely source: “Although the night went the way it did, I had a blast,” Uggla said. “You don’t try and justify anything, it is what it is.  My reputation is what it is.  One night isn’t going to change it.  I made some errors, and I’ll make some more.”  Play ‘em one day at a time, Dan.

Along with Tam DeBolt, the other standout actor was David Coker in the difficult role of Judge Turpin.  Coker – with an intentionally twisted and contorted face throughout – somehow conveyed the chilling creepiness of the judge while still keeping him partially sympathetic.  No mean feat.  The “Pretty Women” duet between the judge and Sweeney Todd plays as serious fun.

On the other hand, this duet, and in fact the whole performance, would be better if all the on-stage murders had been more gruesome and dramatic.  Sweeney Todd is about murder and cannibalism.  There’s a vibrant bloodsplash across all of the marketing materials.  Everything foreshadows this violence.  There’s a rape in front of the audience.  The body count approaches ten.  The words throughout are bleak: There’s a hole in the world / Like a great black pit / And the vermin of the world / Inhabit it / And its morals aren’t worth / What a pig could spit / And it goes by the name of London.”  Even the girls of the ensemble have heavy makeup bruising all over their arms.  It’s supposed to be realistic and gritty.  This is a dark ride.

Someone has decided, however, to reduce the killing to a quick, bloodless, and screamless slash of Sweeney’s razor.  There were three blonde girls in the front row, age ten or so, who weren’t even paying attention as Sweeney committed his murders.  Instead, they often were distracted by something else.  I obviously was, too.  If you’re going to pick Sweeney Todd as a project, it may be a disservice to Abe Reybold, playing the lead, to rob him of his primary opportunity to show the brutality of his character.  I’ll never forget seeing King Lear at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and wincing in sympathy as Gloucester’s eyes were gouged out on stage while he howled and twitched in pain.  It’ll stay with me forever.  Violence in the theatre is not like violence on a movie screen.  You feel it more because it’s right in front of you.  It’s this framework of gritty violence that drives this show.  It should be riveting.

Thanks very much to Nicole Smith and the rest of the Red Mountain Theatre Company for inviting me to see the performance.