In a recent interview with The New York Times, Jennifer Nettles never once mentions the musical “Sweeney Todd.” Lots of interviewees at the Times don’t mention Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim’s great musical; then again, those people haven’t written a new stage musical about a serial killer. As subject matters go, serial killers are rare indeed for musicals. “American Psycho” and “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” come to mind. Even the many killers in Sondheim’s “Assassins” are just one-shot wonders.
How many times has Nettles seen “Sweeney Todd” or listened to its recording? Obviously, not enough.
“Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo” opened Friday at PAC NYC. Nettles not only stars as the title character; she also wrote the songs and the book, and, indeed, the show hits a number of notes struck in “Sweeney Todd.”
First off, there’s a serial killer, based on the real life Giulia Tofana, who, in the 17th Century, poisoned a few hundred men who probably deserved to die for abusing their respective wives, girlfriends and pet dogs. In that respect, Giulia has a definite leg up on Sweeney, who simply slits a number of throats for no other reason than he hates all of mankind. Unlike London’s demon barber, however, this deadly Italian druggist lacks a Mrs. Lovett to lighten up the multiple murders.
In that Times interview, Nettles reveals that she worked with other book writers, but they all had a “campy” approach to the material. In the end, Nettles had to hire herself, not only to write the songs but the book, too.
“Sweeney Todd” isn’t campy, but it is often very funny, thanks to Sondheim’s witty lyrics. Wheeler also gave the show’s serial killer an accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, who brings ditzy low humor to the whole grizzly enterprise.
In “Giulia,” the title character has to carry the moral weight of all those murders alone, and, frankly, as played by Nettles, she’s something of a one-woman dirge. Giulia is also the local abortionist, helping pregnant women not give birth to babies with lousy fathers.
Not that Giulia doesn’t have her scruples. When the Duchessa (Didi Romero) wants to off her husband because he’s a bore, Giulia must say no. Only wife abusers deserve to die. To their credit as serial killers, Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett never cop to having a moral code that exonerates them of guilt.
Regarding the Duchessa, one has to wonder why she doesn’t just lie to Giulia and say her husband forces her to have sex with his brother? It’s a scenario that’s good enough for another woman to receive Giulia’s deadly brew. Apparently, Giulia has an infallible BS-detector when it comes to poisoning only the right bad men.
It’s telling that “Giulia,” unlike “Sweeney Todd,” never shows its title character royally screwing up. Sweeney is so possessed he accidentally kills his long-lost wife in his killing spree. It turns the musical from an exercise in Grand Guignol into a genuine tragedy. A similar transformation could have been achieved with “Giulia” if the Duchessa had duped Giulia, only for the druggist to learn later that she had helped to kill an honest husband.
Instead, Giulia never stops delivering all the high-minded sanctimony of an Aimee Semple McPherson, one who sings female empowerment ballads, the most self-congratulatory being “Call Me David,” as in the slayer of Goliath. Giulia’s fatal flaw may be that she possesses an overbearing superiority complex.
Nettles gives the other Devil all the funniest lines, not that there are many. In scene after scene, the Governatore, played with devilish charm by Christopher M. Ramirez, steals the focus from the righteous serial killer, whose head remains stuck in a feminist manifesto written centuries later by Valerie Solanas. Compared to Giulia’s multiple crimes, the Governatore emerges as something of a piker. He just wants to screw Giulia’s underage daughter, Vitoria (Naomi Serrano), amidst all the murder.
It’s a scenic treat to watch Sweeney Todd repeatedly slice throats. Poison is a decidedly sneaky way to murder, and, as such, not very theatrical.
The real villains in “Sweeney Todd” are Judge Turpin and his servant, Beadle Bamford. Those bad guys in “Giulia” are the Governatore and the Cardinale (Quentin Earl Darrington), both of whom are given a confusing scene at the top of the show that identifies the one as a politician and the other as a clergyman, and therefore bad. The Cardinale, despite eating up lots of stage time, has nothing to do except to deny he’s syphilitic in the face of Giulia’s diagnosis. He sings the self-flagellating “Shame,” a clear rip-off of the Judge’s “Johanna (Mea Culpa)” from “Sweeney Todd.” He does better with his vengeance credo, “The Wolf,” in which, late in act two, he finally finds his raison d’etre for killing Giulia. Unfortunately, the very grandly delivered “Wolf” comes after several equally loud and pompous anthems. Even little Vitoria, stuck away in a convent, gets her big caterwauling moment with “When I Still Believed.”
In “Sweeney Todd,” the chorus’ song “City of Fire” thrills because, in part, it’s preceded by the quiet, plaintive ballad “Not While I’m Around.”
There are kernels of good songs in Nettles’ score, but every catchy tune gets swamped by Cian McCarthy’s orchestrations that bring a “Les Miz”-overstatement to each of them. Watching “Giulia” is like sitting through the season’s grand finale of “American Idol” where every singer is out to win the contest. What can be exciting in a TV singing contest is numbing in the musical theater. At the end of “Giulia,” all that’s missing is Ryan Seacrest appearing to announce, “And the winner is…!”
There is some good news: The physical production is exquisitely restrained under the direction of Mary Zimmerman, who has better luck with her designers than her actor-singers. Daniel Ostling’s scenic design features three doors and a grand staircase off to the side, sinisterly lit by designer T. J. Gerckens. Whenever an actor opens one of those doors, we don’t know what to expect – the bay of Naples, shop windows, a convent — and after a few scenes, the major suspense of “Giulia” is what we’ll find there. Less is always so much more.
