Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
On the days of the dress rehearsal for the Shrunken Heads Production Company’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, A Musical Thriller,” the energy inside the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall is buzzing. The performers apply layers of dark makeup to enhance and perfect the “dark and gloomy Londoner” look, but the actors’ demeanor is the opposite, with sounds of laughter ringing through the staircase backstage. They exchange makeup and jokes before putting on their costumes and heading up to the theater to begin sound checks.
The musical director warms up the orchestra, the production designer messes with the set and Jordan Bedell, the production’s vocal director and Mrs. Lovett, puts on her mic. She runs through a section of “A Little Priest” alongside her Sweeney, played by fourth-year biochemistry major Daniel Roth, under the direction of the musical director. And even though it isn’t nearly the opening night yet, the spirit and passion feel just as alive.
The ocean and mountain views, the California weather, the freedom of liberal arts — what more could you ask for? Well, for the members of Shrunken Heads, it’s bringing musical theater to UC Santa Barbara’s already plentiful campus. A student-run organization, Shrunken Heads went from small classrooms to rapidly outgrowing them and moving into the Lotte Lehmann with support from the music department’s own Richard Croy (or “RC,” as the club members lovingly call him), taking on a challenge with their biggest show yet — Stephen Sondheim’s musical thriller.
Founded in the 2000s, the entirely student-run organization has since taken charge of the contemporary musical theater scene on campus, a niche left behind by the university’s flourishing but classically focused academic program. Since its inception, the organization has produced various shows, from musical theater cabarets to full-scale, full-length productions with impressive set designs and theater space.
“We’ve always struggled, I think, with having a place to be,” Bedell said. “Because the theater department, I think they see us as competition in many ways. And for a long time, the music department didn’t want us either. So we just didn’t really have a place to go.”
Bedell shared a fragment of the complicated history between the club and the university’s departments.
“They would tell us it would cost money if we were going to use their theater spaces, which is against the rules of the university. You can’t charge a student club to use a university space,” Bedell said.
But a beacon of hope came in December 2023, when Croy, the UCSB Production and Events Manager at the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, was hired. Croy’s support allowed Shrunken Heads to see positive development and growth in their production level.
“When [Croy] started working here and we reached out to him, that’s when things started really happening for our club because we finally had a place to perform. And you can’t buy the rights to a musical until you have a venue booked,” Bedell said. “Before that, we were stuck. And now, he lets us rehearse in the Music Building classrooms. We have rehearsal space, we have a real theater. So, things have just gotten exponentially better for us since he got involved.”
Because of the high demand of musical theater, with its long hours and the number of rehearsals needed to perfect the sound, blocking and dance alongside its 28-person orchestra, Shrunken Heads performs only one production a year, with 2025’s being Sondheim’s not-so-cheery gothic tragedy of “Sweeney Todd.” The show follows Sweeney Todd, a barber who returns to London after years in prison with the goal of avenging the death of his wife and kidnapping his daughter against the corrupt Judge Turpin. In the process, Todd murders as many people as he can under the guise of his profession, while his business associate Mrs. Lovett bakes pies with the bodies, selling them to her customers.
Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
The show, well known for the extremity of its musical and physical demands, was a unanimous pick by the club’s board, with its campaign led by Bedell and the company’s Musical Director Finlay Christensen, a fifth-year music composition and political science double major.
“We were at the after-party for ‘Cabaret’ and we immediately started scheming. Everyone else was having a good time, and we were locked in,” Christensen said, speaking of the effort he and his “partner-in-crime” Bedell put into the campaign. “[Bedell] was firing off a list of like, five different musicals at me, and she said, ‘I love “Sweeney Todd.” And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I like “Sweeney Todd” too!’”
“I was lying,” Christensen continued. “But she was basically on the ‘Sweeney Todd’ warpath and when a person with that level of dedication is so hell-bent on doing something, you kind of know that people are going to be committed.”
It’s no secret that the show itself has heavy orchestration and complex music, but that didn’t scare Christensen.
“I’m a sucker for big orchestras … And I knew that we could do this. I just really had to drill it and drill it and drill it, and now it sounds like an absolutely original, if not semi-professional level, show at this point, as far as the orchestra goes,” he said.
Praising his orchestra, Christensen spoke of the process of tackling the show’s tough transitions and motifs, where the orchestra was gathered for a couple of preliminary auditions to guarantee a successful sitzprobe with the band and actors singing and performing the show together for the first time.
“Conducting Sondheim is hell, yeah. It’s so different,” he said. “It really is kind of a ‘big boy’ conducting gig. But [the orchestra] knows me, and I know them well as musicians so that just kind of helps the synergy that we have.”
But conducting the shows for Shrunken Heads is not where Christensen’s resume ends — having previously been involved in multiple UCSB short films, composing and playing on the soundtracks. And in the case of Sweeney Todd, the UCSB film scene is where Christensen met fourth-year English major and Director Curran Seth, running into each other at multiple film pitch sessions for FAMST 106. After getting to know Seth’s craft by “watching him on [Christensen’s] roommate’s editing screen,” Christensen offered Seth the opportunity to apply for the job.
“I care deeply about the story and all characters and a lot of that work. So that was always my focus,” Seth, who honed his own approach to tackling the tough material of the show, said. “I’m very thorough in the way that I communicate with actors because I want them to understand these characters as real people.”
He spoke of the immense pleasure of working with the all-student cast, being impressed with the work applied to bring the characters of “Sweeney Todd” to life.
“It takes so much commitment, so much patience. It’s a different kind of world than the rest of the characters live in. And you have to bring in the level of intellect, class, structure, all of the larger socio-economic things about human society that are involved with the character, in addition to [the actor’s] own person. Those are the things that I like to dig in very deeply on,” Seth said.
Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
When the night of the show finally came, the audience was amped up with anticipation. Families and friends gathered outside the concert hall, each holding flowers and grinning ear-to-ear as they were eager to be let inside to witness the performance. As they finally settled in their seats, the hall filled with clouds of fog and the Shrunken Heads winter production of “Sweeney Todd” began.
Undeniably a crowd pleaser, especially with their marvel of Sweeney’s killer barber chair, which dumps the ‘dead bodies’ of Sweeney’s victims under the stage with a single lift of a lever, the performance was full of heart with the actors giving it their all — something that gave this specific adaptation its unique element by connecting with the audience who could feel the cast’s palpable joy of being on stage.
Blowing the roof off of one of UCSB’s finest performance spaces, the club yet again cemented its place in the university as a community of like-minded people who want to and will create art despite the limitations placed upon them. The spirit of creativity felt so authentically present on the first night of the show — something that will undoubtedly carry Shrunken Heads into a bright and promising future.
