Most years around my birthday my mother complains that she doesn't have a clue what to get me, not to mention my sister waiting only a few days before to ask what I want, so this year I let my mam and dad know well in advance what they could get me - a ticket for Sweeney Todd. Even when there were rumours of a West End transfer of the Chichester festival production, I wondered if I'd get to see it, so it was just my luck when the limited run included August.
For anyone who doesn't know the story, Sweeney Todd arrives back in London seeking revenge on the judge whose trumped up charges sent him to Australia so he could have his way with Todd's wife. Along the way on this course for revenge he slits a few customers' throats and sends them downstairs for Mrs Lovett to make into pies... You know, the usual jolly musical fare!
I've wanted to see Sweeney live for years, I own both the Patti LuPone cast recording and live NY Philharmonic concert CD (as well as watching the video of the original production starring Angela Lansbury) but as much a fan of LuPone that I am, her cockney accent is only a few syllables away from Dick Van Dyke's! So it made a good change to hear Sweeney Todd sung in convincing accents. Both Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton were brilliant, Staunton seemed to be channeling Julie Walters for her Mrs Lovett, but that's not to take anything away from her performance, it's fair to say she provided all the comedy. Ball was excellent as usual, scarily brilliant considering the last time (and first time) I saw him in a musical he was in a dress playing a working-class mother in Hairspray! Ball's performance was the best that I've heard this musical sung, Epiphany being the stand-out number of the show, with Ball's vocals and acting, and even the set which rolls out so close to the front of the stage that he could almost give the audience a shave with the razor he swings about! The rest of the cast were just as excellent but it's probably true to say that this is Ball & Staunton's show, I wouldn't mind betting on Oliviers for them next year!
The set is interesting to say the least, and with it being so big and the main actors and ensemble being spread around it it was sometimes slightly hard to know where to look. I thought the setting being moved to the 1930s instead of Victorian London was going to be the only part of the show wouldn't work but it didn't take anything away from the story or the music, and of course the first half of the 20th Century had its murderers too! A brilliant show even if you don't come out singing any of the numbers, but that probably has something to do with Sondheim being notoriously hard to sing along to!
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