"Sweetie" Tanya Musical's Many Chefs Concoct Potent Dessert

The theater is full of big egos, and musical theater probably boasts the biggest of all. Noel Coward acted as spokesman for the genre when he said, "I'm an enormously talented man, and there's no use pretending that I'm not." Perhaps this is why successful musicals hardly ever feature the input of more than a couple of core creators. On the rare occasion that a musical involves more than two composers and lyricists, disaster almost invariably ensues. Take the fiasco surrounding the development of the musical version of Peter Pan back in the 1950s, for instance. The combination of the original Mike Charlap and Carolyn Leigh score with revisions by Adolph Comden, Betty Green, and Jule Styne created something of a musical Frankenstein's monster. The show lasted barely four months when it opened in 1954.

It's a good thing Dan Wilson didn't pay much attention to history when he set about creating his latest musical for Cassandra's Call Productions. If the local black-box-theater maverick had thought too deeply about the pitfalls of collaborating with multiple songwriters, San Francisco audiences might have missed out on a vicious theatrical treat. For the bravura of "Sweetie" Tanya: The Demon Barista of Valencia Street extends well beyond its clever if tangential parody of the Stephen Sondheim classic, Sweeney Todd (which has been much in the news of late owing both to Tim Burton's new movie adaptation and the Broadway production which recently visited A.C.T. — both "happy accidents," according to Wilson). The best thing about Wilson's musical is its music, which, featuring the diverse yet improbably seamless efforts of no fewer than 10 songwriters, throws cold coffee in the face of received theatrical wisdom.

"Sweetie" Tanya grew out of Wilson's desire to bring a barista friend's outlandish real-life stories of on-the-job sexual harassment to the Darkroom stage. Seeing his friend as a modern-day Sweeney Todd, Wilson spins her narratives into a ghoulish-hilarious tale about a world-weary thirtysomething by the name of Tanya with a short fuse for dealing with misplaced male urges. Life is tough enough when Tanya's difficult past causes her to flee to San Francisco. But it only gets tougher when her job at a seedy Mission District cafe sparks bloodthirsty consequences.

Only the barest outlines of Sweeney Todd remain in this contemporary, Bay Area–centric recasting of Sondheim's musical about a 19th-century barber who, with the help of resourceful piemaker Mrs. Lovett, wreaks revenge on all of London for destroying his family life. Sondheim's ghost is most obviously present in the evolution of the main plot, the crumbling moral framework of a thankless world, and the opening number ("Attend the tale of "Sweetie" Tanya/Her smile was dead when she stared upon ya" versus "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd/His skin was pale and his eye was odd"). In most other respects, "Sweetie" Tanya presents a vivacious departure from the source material. From its offbeat morphing of Mrs. Lovett into a certain well-known country music artist to its pat dismissal of Sweeney Todd's carnivorous conceit (Lovett: "Why not grind him up and serve him to your customers?" Tanya: "Nah. He'd make terrible coffee, and we don't have the equipment to make calzones"), Wilson's musical does more than simply send up Sondheim; it gleefully rejects the great American songwriter outright. Sweeney Todd might examine the grimy underbelly of society, but "Sweetie" Tanya dances a fandango on its insides.

It's quite a dance, thanks to the show's memorable music. "Sweetie" Tanya's use of multiple song styles isn't what makes it special — musicals often flaunt a songwriter's skills by veering among styles from madrigal to electro-pop. "Sweetie" Tanya rocks from a compositional standpoint because its songs, though the product of many different creative partnerships, blend seamlessly into the story. It's like a musical version of a mocha frappuccino: There are more ingredients involved than might be deemed healthy, yet the mix tastes delicious on the tongue.