Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd first premiered on Broadway in 1979 and arrived in London in 1980. It is based on the 1973 play of the same name by Christopher Bond. The character Sweeney Todd initially appeared in a penny dreadful serial ‘The String of Pearls’ first published in 1846-7. Director Heather Legat tells us the show is huge and challenging for those on stage and off. It is a great drama, with a complex musical score and well-drawn characters. It paints an astonishingly vivid picture of Victorian London, and is full of emotion, action, and power. Musical Director Diana Vivian describes it as something between a musical and a ballad opera. Sondheim himself called it a dark operetta, a musical thriller.

Farnham Maltings is huge, with a rabbit warren of rooms, halls, and staircases. The theatre itself is spacious and well-equipped, with good ranked seating.

We were offered a very fine, well-designed programme, with excellent and very informative notes from the two directors, which greatly enhanced our appreciation of Sondheim’s masterly work. There was a good and full synopsis, great rehearsal photos, and a piece on the partnership of Sondheim and Angela Lansbury, who played the original Mrs Lovett. Interesting director and cast profiles, and a list of musical numbers were enlightening as always. I also feel that one can never underestimate the importance of the list of past productions, always lovely for regular visitors to look back through.

This show lends itself to dramatic use of lighting, and this was very effective at highlighting the torment felt by so many of the characters. Sound quality, and very importantly balance between orchestra and voices was excellent.

The old beggar woman was clad in layers of rags, with raggedy hair, and was made up to look very old. The judge and beadle were in top hats and so on. Mrs Lovett wore ever finer clothes, the more successful her pie shop became. Her clients wore workaday attire. The lunatics were clad in stark, white, voluminous and often stained gowns. Johanna always wore a pretty white dress, save when in the lunatic asylum. Mr Pirelli was resplendent in his vibrant showman barber’s outfit.

The set was very effective, making good use of the stage, with the pie shop and barbers to the right, shop below, barbers up an ominous set of stairs. The left was left free for all the other action, whether it be the judge’s fine quarters, with Johanna looking out from an upstairs window, or the ever expanding outdoor seating at the pie shop, or the so intimidating lunatic asylum. Two clever moveable and reversible square columns were useful to create these different locations, bricks on one side, bookcases on another and so on. As Mrs Lovett became more successful her living quarters became finer, with drapes, lace covers for her harmonium, and the like. The most important props of course were Todd’s wooden case of razors, and his proud purchase – a fine barber’s chair.

Diana Vivian’s musical direction of this extremely complex piece was exemplary. Sondheim’s every word and phrase, every pause, rest and beat in his score was intended to create a strong reaction in his audience. The very opening with the stark sight of the company singing the Ballad of Sweeney Todd certainly created a strong reaction in this audience member. The harsh and upsetting harmonies both vocally and orchestrally threaded throughout the piece, and underscoring all the action, meant that this tension created in the opening minutes lasted for the duration. This music is so effective, provoking and powerful, and the care effort and surely time put in by this team truly paid off. So many overlapping voices (at least 18) and instruments (13) meant that the dramatic nature of the piece was brought out the whole way through.

Heather Legat can also be congratulated for her fine direction, what a super partnership!

In the opening scene we met the young, innocent, hopeful sailor Anthony Hope. His life is before him, an unopened book, he is thrilled to be in London (No Place Like London), and feels a camaraderie with Todd, whose life he saved during the voyage back from Australia. Lewis Hoskins made a fine Anthony, portraying that lust for life, the fresh youthfulness, the pure love for Johanna. He stays strong and uncorrupted, far away from the dark undercurrents of this huge dirty metropolis. Kevin Sampson gave us a fine Sweeney Todd, at first a deceptively ordinary returned convict, but with a vicious desire to revenge his beautiful wife Lucy, and on a quest to find his lost daughter Johanna. There was a cynicism and cruelty about him, of course, but Sampson also brought out a sense of vulnerability and outrage in him that gave the character added depth.

The crazed Beggar Woman was played very convincingly by Hazel Burrows, her vulnerability contrasting well with her canny survival instinct, as heard in ‘No Place Like London’, first begging for alms then brazenly offering her body. Johanna, Todd’s lost daughter, (Victoria Howard-Andrews), now the ward of Judge Turpin, was pure innocence in a simple white dress, with a bright clear voice.

Alexandra Yates was a superb Mrs Lovett, the sharp businesswoman out to take all opportunities offered to improve her life, with no scruples as to how this was to be done, and yet showing her human side in her motherly reaction to Tobias, and her yearning for an idyllic change of lifestyle (By the Sea). She was in fine voice, and had great comic timing.

Judge Turpin was a menacing, creepy character, in many ways he made me feel quite ill – a powerful performance from Martin Sampson. Beadle Bamford (Dave Collier) was also a nasty slimy piece of work, their appearance on the stage always leading to feelings of slight terror and awe.  The judge himself seemed to have no redeeming features, totally fixated as he was on possessing Johanna.

Tobias Ragg, originally the lad working for the flamboyant barber Pirelli (Alex Campbell) was well played by George Priestley. He was thrilled to be taken on by Mrs Lovett, but as he gradually became suspicious, and then realised what was going on, Priestley played his horror, and his final madness, exceedingly well, quietly, disbelievingly, despairingly.

This was a strong team performance so well directed by both Heather Legat and Diana Vivian, a marvellous evening’s theatre! Thank you, FAOS.

 

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