GRAMMER SINGS `SWEENEY'; CLASSICALLY TRAINED STAR GIVES VOICE TO BELEAGUERED BARBER.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Having spent 15 years in the cutthroat, cannibalistic world of network television, you may ask what's compelling Kelsey Grammer to play a slash-happy London barber who kills, then devours, his victims.

A simple case of ``turnabout is fair play''?

Not really. It's just that, as Grammer acknowledges, he's always been a man of voracious appetites - for work, success and new ways of pushing and polishing his craft.

A man who likes to stay hungry - very hungry.

That accounts for why the well-paid star of NBC's long-running hit comedy ``Frasier'' could be found last week at Paramount Studios' Stage 29, picking through the carcass of a takeout lunch while waiting to resume rehearsals for ``Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,'' the landmark Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical.

A 20th anniversary concert version of the dark-hued, quasi-operatic work, mounted by the 2-year-old ``Reprise!'' series and directed by Calvin Remsberg, will open a five-performance, minimally staged, concert-style run tonight at the Ahmanson Theatre.

Grammer will star as the demoniacal title character, whose unjust imprisonment, coupled with the loss of his wife, leads him to exact a terrifying revenge. The production co-stars Christine Baranski as Sweeney's chipper partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, and also features Neil Patrick Harris, Melissa Manchester, Dale Kristien and Ken Howard.

Although the ``Reprise!'' cast is packed with brand-name, award-winning talent, the production timetable has been tight, lasting only a couple of weeks from start to finish. Cramming in a rehearsal last week between ``Frasier'' tapings, Grammer admitted that his appearing in ``Sweeney Todd'' ``doesn't make any rational sense, because I don't have the time.''

But when Remsberg, a close friend of Sondheim's, obtained production rights to the show and approached Grammer about playing the lead, it ``was just too good an opportunity to pass up.''

``It's part of my earlier promise to myself that I would continue to challenge myself throughout my life,'' says the 44-year-old actor.

His ``boyhood dream,'' Grammer explains, was to play the great Shakespearean tragic heroes - Romeo, Macbeth, Hamlet, maybe Othello. Earlier in his career, the classically trained actor performed on stage at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, on and off Broadway and at regional theaters around the country. He also starred in the Bard's ``Richard II'' at the Mark Taper Forum in 1992.

Grammer believes that ``in terms of the physical requirements and the demands and attention to specificity on the language and vocal production,'' ``Sweeney Todd'' comes pretty close to Shakespeare.

But unlike the Moor or the melancholy Dane, Sweeney has to carry a tune.

``I think one of the hardest things to do is to actually sing a song in front of an audience,'' Grammer says, ``because you have to remember character and situation and relationships all at the same time - and actually having an audience watch it - while you're also trying to still play a part. That's the essential requirement - that the part is still being portrayed through the music.

``And sometimes (the song) has one word too many that can cause a little short-circuit - especially with this limited a rehearsal. If you had three months to rehearse this, that would no longer be a concern. But since we have just a short time to rehearse, it's a little nerve-wracking.''

So why is he doing it?

``You know, I'm a workhorse,'' he says quickly. ``And in this way, at least I still get to get my juice from a live performance that I do really miss some of the time. It's a craving I have. Probably the place where I feel most invigorated, in terms of my work experience, has always been live theater. So here I am.''

Where Grammer is, technically speaking, is about as high as you can get up the network food chain without being Jerry Seinfeld.

His creation, Dr. Frasier Crane, a neurotic, bombastic radio psychiatrist, already is among the longest-lived characters in sitcom history, having spent nine seasons as a beloved ``Cheers'' regular before being rewarded with his very own show six seasons ago.

As Frasier, Grammer wields a slashing, intelligent wit that's well balanced by the equally cutting humor of his foils David Hyde Pierce, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin and John Mahoney.

His instinct for going for the comic jugular looks well-suited to the funny, macabre ``Sweeney Todd,'' whose retro-gothic melodies and fiendishly clever lyrics sent shivers of stunned admiration through Broadway when the show opened in March 1979.

Based on Christopher Bond's 1973 drama, which itself was derived from an 1847 Victorian melodrama in the ``penny dreadful'' manner, ``Sweeney Todd'' pushed the Broadway musical into high tragedy and further toward the pointillistic, atonal musical palette that Sondheim continues to evolve.

However, some found it hard to stomach this ghastly stew of mass murder and cannibalism, improbably sweetened with some of the loveliest melodies Sondheim ever has written (``Pretty Women,'' ``Johanna,'' ``Not While I'm Around''). The score also is spiced with such cruelly witty numbers as ``A Little Priest,'' in which Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett debate the relative gustatory merits of various professional men who've been baked into her dreadful pies.

Some critics, while admiring the show's exquisite craftsmanship in the original Harold Prince production, complained about its coldness. Others found that coldness appropriate for a story framed by the mise en scene of dog-eat-dog, 19th-century London during the Industrial Revolution.

Although Grammer has seen few live productions of Sondheim's work, he counts himself a ``huge'' fan of the composer.

``I really just love his imagination and his brain,'' Grammer says. ``I saw `A Little Night Music' years ago in the theater and of course was charmed by that piece. I think that's a really marvelous piece.''

Melissa Manchester, who plays the mysterious Beggar Woman in the ``Reprise!'' production, remembers the tremendous impact ``Sweeney Todd'' had on her when she saw its first national tour.

``It is so densely filled with all levels of humanity, the psychological and the emotional and the poetic. So it's a feast,'' Manchester says. ``And studying the score more and more, you realize the exquisite intricacy of the storytelling and the actual score itself. I mean, it's no surprise that (Sondheim) loves puzzles, because this has just been put together flawlessly.''

Marcia Seligson, producing artistic director of ``Reprise!'' says she's wanted to do ``Sweeney Todd'' ever since she kicked off the series with the Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach-Hal David musical ``Promises, Promises'' in 1997. But she believes ``we never would've been able to do this three years ago. It would've been too big for us.''

Then one day she got an unexpected call from Remsberg, who'd performed the role of the Beadle in the original national tour of ``Sweeney Todd'' and had heard about ``Reprise!''

``He just called me, I think he got my phone number from (`Reprise!' music director) Peter Matz, and said, `Would you want to do this?' And I said, `I would kill to do this!' ''

Heh, heh, heh.

Gallows humor is a useful commodity for a show that shatters the Broadway cardinal rule about sending audiences home savoring a happy ending and whistling a catchy romantic melody.

Yet Grammer thinks even a man who turns himself into a killing machine can be lovable.

``My version? They're gonna love him!'' he declares, chuckling. ``What's lovable about him is his pain. There's not a woman in the house who won't think, `Oh, that poor, dear man!' ''

Grammer has always been candid in discussing the pain in his own life, which approaches Shakespearean proportions. His father and his 18-year-old sister were both murdered. Two half-brothers were killed when he was 25.

Grammer has acknowledged past episodes of substance abuse and as recently as September 1996, he checked himself into the Betty Ford Center for treatment after he crashed his Dodge Viper near Mulholland Highway in the Malibu Lake area while under the influence of alcohol.

Twice divorced, he once was the subject of sexual misconduct allegations brought by a teen-age girl that resulted in no indictment.

Yet he politely deflects any suggestion that his past troubles could supply plenty of grist for his portrayal of Sweeney - a man who, like Shakespeare's Lear, may be more sinned against than sinning.

``I've always had an approach to the work where it ignites my imagination, and, oh, if some of the stuff in my own life can kind of come along for the ride, fine,'' Grammer says. ``But I would never try to weigh down what is bigger than me with my own nonsense.

``You know, I mean I'm not much of a method actor, I guess. Well, I've found my own method! I don't think that my stealing a candy bar when I was 8 years old has any real significance in what is a much larger canvas than my own life. But what I can bring to it is my imagination - which is as big as all life.''

THE FACTS

What: ``Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.''

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown.

When: 7:30 tonight, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $35 to $75. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Cutting wit

Kelsey Grammer plays the mad barber in `Sweeney Todd'

(2) ``Sweeney Todd'' cast members rehearse on Stage 29 at Paramount Studios for the five-performance run of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical that is being done concert style as part of the ``Reprise!'' series.

(3) ``Frasier'' star Kelsey Grammer plays the vengeful title character.

David R. Crane/Daily News