Sweeney Todd Stage Show Hong Kong Review

I'm not really a big theater person.  As much as I love a good musical, I usually end up watching movies over going to stage performances.   But when one of your friends are performing you HAVE to go to support! Last night Patrick, Archie and I went to the Shouson theater at the Arts Centre in Wanchai to check out the opening night performance of the Youth Arts Foundation's production of Sweeney Todd ( official page).  Having only seen the film version, not the previous Broadway version,  I wasn't sure how the tale of a homicidal revenge fueled barber and his cannibalistic baker accomplice could be presented on stage, but they've managed to do it.  (its actually good, the copious amounts of blood seen in the movie are technically infeasible and therefore absent!)They did a strange thing in translating it to the stage for HK though: it was bilingual - the songs of course were in English and in between there were narrators playing some of the supporting cast who would summarize things in Cantonese.   They also had some of the actors also switching between Cantonese and English, but it was a bit strange,  at times they would repeat their lines in both English and Cantonese, and other times they would give lines only in Cantonese and the other actors would answer in English and you'd have to guess from the response what the Cantonese dialogue was.  My Cantonese comprehension is decent enough that I could figure it out most of the time, but it was a strange approach to take and I don't think it worked very well,  especially since only some of the actors were bilingual enough to do it.  Occasionally some of the non-Cantonese speaking actors would deliver random Cantonese lines, ie "fai di zao le!" which was also a bit strange.Aside from the dialogue issue, I couldn't quite figure out why everyone in the cast had their faces painted white like ghosts. Is this how they did it on Broadway?  a bit over-the-top for me. :-PBut don't get me wrong, the play was well done. The direction, sets and choreography were very good. I like how they continually combined the main cast, the chorus and the dancers (definitely kept it more visually interesting than if it was just 2-3 actors on an empty stage). Since I haven't seen anything but the movie before, I don't know how it compared to other stage versions.Acting and singing-wise, there's no doubt that Kristina Lao is the strongest performer in the show.  I'm not just saying that because she's a friend! Even people who didn't know anyone in the show said the same thing.  I have enjoyed Kristina's music on stage but I had no idea she could act too!  Quite impressive actually! Because its me, I couldn't resist taking at least ONE surreptitious pic: 
She got the strongest response from the crowd too,  which she earned! Congrats to the Youth Arts Foundation and Kristina!