David Hess has traveled a long road from Lakeland to starring in the national tour of Sweeney Todd as the barber who slashes his customers' throats. In director John Doyle's production, in which the actors are also the orchestra, Hess plays trumpet, which was what he did for a living before becoming an actor.
Hess was a trumpet player and drum major at Lakeland High and the University of Florida, then a high school band director in Ocala for a year. He played trumpet professionally in Las Vegas, where he had an epiphany while watching an episode of M*A*S*H on TV and realized he wanted to act.
"I cried like a baby, and a light went off in my head, and I knew that's what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life,'' he said.
Hess moved back to Florida in the early 1980s and studied acting at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "It was such an important time for me,'' he said. "Nancy Cole (then chair of the theater department) was my first mentor.''
He remembers a production of Brecht's A Man's a Man, directed by USF professor Dennis Calandra, as influencing his approach to playing Sweeney in Doyle's bare-bones staging. "We did it in the black box theater at USF, and this Sweeney reminds me very much of that,'' he said.
While in the Tampa Bay area Hess performed at dinner theaters such as the Country Dinner Playhouse and the Show Boat ("I did a show there called My Three Angels with Cesar Romero") in Pinellas County and the Mark One Dinner Theater in Lakeland.
He eventually left for the greater acting opportunities of Los Angeles and New York, where he has lived for 14 years. His Broadway credits include Sweeney Todd as the standby for Sweeney and Judge Turpin and Annie Get Your Gun, in which he played sharpshooter Frank Butler opposite Reba McEntire.
Another cast member in the tour also has Tampa Bay ties. Keith Buterbaugh, who plays Judge Turpin, was in American Stage's production of I Left My Heart, a Tony Bennett tribute, in 2005.
Hess' father, a longtime Baptist church music director, and mother plan to drive over from Lakeland to see Sweeney Todd. "My dad is a pretty religious fellow, and he is reluctantly going to make the trip,'' Hess said, admitting to some nervousness about the impact of the grisly tale. "This show is not his cup of tea. But he's going to put it out there for his son.''
John Fleming,
Times performing arts critic
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