I Demand to Ride the Sweeney Todd Death Slide

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Weee!!!

Broadway is in crisis!

Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but if I’ve learned anything from Broadway naming convention, it’s that if you want to capture the public’s attention, tack on an exclamation point. And right now, the public’s attention is not caught. The holiday crowds have dissipated, and most of the flashy new shows of the spring season have yet to debut, so grosses are down and theaters are sitting well below full capacity. This week, usual guaranteed moneymakers like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Disney’s Aladdin made under a million dollars in gross profit. Broadway, like an entertainment blogger with seasonal affective disorder, is in a bit of a midwinter slump.

One glimmering exception? Sweeney Todd, as on February 9, the show debuted its new Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett, Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster, respectively. Add the recent casting of Joe Locke as Toby to the mix, and all eyes are on Sweeney. The issue is all ears are on Sweeney as well, and Broadway fans are not liking what they’re hearing. Some theater geeks think Tveit is maybe just a bit too much of a tenor to play the menacing baritone title role, but the big controversy surrounded leaked audio of Foster performing “Worst Pies in London.” I won’t link to it here, partially to avoid sharing unlawfully recorded audio and partially because to spare you an extremely rough listen. The clip has 1.3 million views on X, another 400,000 on TikTok, and led to one colleague telling me, “She should be sent to Broadway prison.” (For the record, I saw her the other week in City Center’s limited run of Once Upon a Mattress and she was beyond incredible.) Sweeney Todd needs to bury the iffy Sutton buzz with a bigger distraction, and Broadway in general needs a reason for audiences to come out in droves and pay premium ticket prices again. I have a solution to both of these problems.

Let people ride the Sweeney Todd barber-chair death slide at intermission.

If you haven’t seen the current production of the Stephen Sondheim classic, set designer Mimi Lien places Sweeney’s barber shop on an elevated bridge, positioned above the rest of the show’s action. When his special barber’s chair is revealed, so, too, is its most exciting mechanism. Sweeney slits a customer’s throat, pulls a lever that tilts the chair at an angle, and sends the corpse sliding down into Mrs. Lovett’s basement. As actor after actor plays dead and expressionless while getting shot offstage down a big mysterious slide, it becomes more and more apparent to the jealous theatergoer that the slide must be so, so fun to ride.

Josh Groban confirmed how fun the slide is on The Tonight Show last October when he said, “Let me tell you, they lube up the chair pretty good before the show. The actors just go, they’re like, Wheeee! Sometimes I hear a wheeee on the way down.” The Sweeney Todd death slide clearly has what it takes to be Times Square’s premiere thrill attraction, and every day that producers don’t allow audiences a chance to ride the slide, it might as well be wads of cash that they’re sending down the chute to burn in Mrs. Lovett’s oven. Exactly how and why it would work:

  • Audiences are already used to add-on charges for premium theater experiences. Over at the August Wilson Theatre, the upcoming production of Cabaret is charging north of $500 for “table seats” with VIP “stage-side dining” tickets. Surely people would pay, say, a $75 up-charge on top of their orchestra ticket for a Ride the Slide Sweeney experience. Throw in a Splash Mountain–style photo op and a signed “I Survived a Shave at Sweeney’s!” souvenir Playbill, and you can easily crank that number up to $200.
  • It’s not like an onstage interactive experience is totally unheard of on Broadway. During the Broadway run of Once, audiences were able to visit the onstage pub at intermission and buy a pint. At the Circle in the Square Oklahoma! revival, audiences lined up onstage for free chili and cornbread at intermission. It is not the crowd-control nightmare that it sounds like, and the number of Ride the Slide tickets could be capped at a manageable amount to ensure maximum flow and efficiency.
  • One potential issue is how the slide leads to a backstage area. This isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. Just position an usher at the base of the slide, and have a clearly marked exit back into the audience area of the theater.
  • Of course, Ride the Slide participants would have to sign a liability waiver before sliding so that this doesn’t turn from a cash cow into a financial risk. This is pretty much industry standard for experiences like go-karts, zip lines, etc. Shouldn’t be an issue. (This is not legal advice.)
  • I heard some acquaintances express that this production of Sweeney Todd leans too heavily into comedy, and that it takes away from the horror. I personally find the comedy delightful and the whole show adequately chilling when it means to be (“City on Fire” etc.). One shouldn’t be looking to Broadway musicals for genuine spooks and scares. But sitting in Sweeney’s chair and getting sent to your death is definitely the sort of thrilling experience such people have been looking for. It’s immersive theater, really.
  • Disney and Harry Potter should not have a monopoly on the theme park-ification of Broadway and Times Square. These media monoliths already have theme parks of their own! There is a moral imperative for smaller IP to theme park-ify.
  • The experts agree. When I floated this idea by theater critic Jackson McHenry, he said, “I think my experience as a critic would be enhanced if I could ride the slide, because I want to know the terror of the characters and also the fun that Sweeney has pushing them down, and I always want to be allowed to go onstage at intermission and poke around.”
  • At the very least, if you don’t want to implement a Ride the Slide ticket supplement, you can make this some sort of sweepstakes or contest. Maybe for one lucky audience member? Maybe that audience member is me?

    • So Sweeney Todd producers, please give this idea a shot. It will lead to huge ticket sales, delighted audiences, big buzz, and positive PR that has nothing to do with Foster putting her bare feet all up in Tveit’s face. I don’t just want to attend the tale. I demand to ride the slide!

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    I Demand to Ride the Sweeney Todd Death Slide

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