Sweeney Todd

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

RFH Sweeney Todd Logo Royal Festival Hall, Thursday 5 July 2007 - Saturday 7 July 2007

Royal Festival Hall website for ticket information

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Book by Hugh Wheeler.
Adapted by Christopher Bond

Presented by arrangement with Josef Weinberger Limited on behalf of Music Theatre International o f New York.

This is a thrilling operatic musical, a dark and absorbing tale of love, murder and obsession set in the harsh underworld of Victorian London.

Sweeney having spent 15 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, eventually returns from Australia to seek revenge on the judge that put him away. His daughter is now the ward of the same judge, and Mrs Lovett of the infamous pie shop, utilising meat from the bodies Sweeney kills while giving them "the closest shave" and Sondheim produces a scintillating and murderously brilliant musical.

Building on Hugh Wheeler's adaptation of Christopher Bond's play, Sondheim's musical brings the hypocritical world of Victorian society to bustling life, while finding within its social inequalities a Dickensian sense of character and humour.

David - Freeman Director
Dan Potra - Designer

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Stephen Barlow, performs Stephen Sondheim's richly melodic score, bringing this tale of vengeance brilliantly to life. Maria Friedman takes the role of Mrs Lovett and this is Bryn Terfel's first UK appearance as Sweeney.

Cast:

Bryn Terfel - Sweeney Todd (this is the first time he has sung the role in London)
Maria Friedman - Mrs Lovett
Philip Quast - Judge Turpin
Daniel Boys - Anthony Hope
Emma Williams - Johanna
Steve Elias- Beadle Bamford
Daniel Evans - Tobias Ragg
Adrian Thompson - Pirelli
Rosemary Ashe - Beggar Woman

Maida Vale Singers Chorus

Guildford School of Acting Chorus


Detailed Synopsis:

Act I:

Down at the docks, two men disembark and greet their native city. For Anthony Hope, after years overseas, There's No Place Like London. Sweeney Todd echoes that sentiment but for different reasons: London is a hell hole, a black pit in which all the vermin of the earth are gathered. As they part, a deranged Beggar Woman pathetically offers herself to them. Todd is cruelly abusive, to the surprise of Anthony, who has only known him as kind and gentle. Now, he seems embittered and hateful. But London can do that. Todd relates the sad story of The Barber and His Wife - and the rich, powerful man who desired her.

We next meet Mrs. Nellie Lovett, an amoral, pragmatic seller of meat pies. When Todd arrives, seeking out his former home above her shop, she describes her wares as The Worst Pies in London. She bustles around worrying about the flies and her competitor, Mrs. Mooney, who has been thriving of late by "popping pussies into pies." She declares that times are hard, even harder than her pies. Todd inquires about the room upstairs and hears Mrs. Lovett's account of The Barber and His Wife,

Todd asks her to tell him more, and in Poor Thing she relates the terrifying story of how the corrupt Judge and his Beadle had the barber unjustly transported, lured his sweet naive wife to the Judge's house, where she was raped and her beautiful child taken from her. The barber was never seen again, the wife took poison, but the girl Johanna still lives with the Judge. Even as she tells the tale, Mrs. Lovett knows to whom she speaks: Sweeney Todd has returned to have his revenge. She hands him the tools of his trade, carefully kept by her since the day he was convicted. My Friends, murmurs Todd, caressing his razors. "I'm your friend, too," adds Mrs. Lovett. He takes the lodgings and sets up business as a barber.

Outside Judge Turpin's house, a Birdseller's Green Finch and Linnet Bird are serenaded by another helpless caged creature from the highest window in the house: Johanna. Passing by, Anthony buys a bird and offers it to the young lady (Ah, Miss), but the Judge warns him to keep away from his "daughter". Too late: Anthony is in love and determined to rescue Johanna.

In St. Dunstan's Place, a rival barber, Pirelli, is demonstrating the remarkable properties of Pirelli's Miracle Elixir - much mocked by Todd, who challenges the mountebank to a shaving competition. The eager crowd enlists the help of Beadle Bamford, who umpires The Contest and pronounces Todd the winner. Business booms in Fleet Street, but the obsessed Todd awaits only the Beadle's custom. Wait, Mrs. Lovett advises: vengeance will be his.

Unaware of Todd's return, the Judge has decided to marry his "daughter" himself. Johanna is distraught, until Anthony climbs up to her room. Kiss Me, they cry, and plan their escape. With his wedding looming, the Judge is persuaded by the Beadle that Ladies in Their Sensibilities like a man freshly shaved and pomaded. They make their way to Fleet Street, and, as the lecherous Judge gleefully expounds on the subject of Pretty Women, he little suspects that Todd's last visitor now lies lifeless in the barber's trunk. Pirelli had recognized the returned convict and foolishly attempted a little blackmail. But, just as Todd is about to dispatch the Judge too, Anthony bursts in, gushing about Johanna and their elopement. Judge Turpin leaves, swearing that boy and barber are obviously in league. Todd rages at Anthony, at Mrs. Lovett, and, experiencing his own mad Epiphany, vows revenge on all humanity. Mrs. Lovett is more practical: what about Pirelli? Seems a shame to waste such fine, plump flesh. What with the price of meat, maybe she and Mr. Todd could be of mutual assistance. After all, her pies could do with some new flavours - Italian barber, Royal Marine and maybe A Little Priest.

Act II:

Mrs. Lovett's distinctive pies are the talk of Fleet Street. God, That's Good, belch the patrons of her thriving new ale garden. With such a harmonious business partnership, Mrs. Lovett is keen to put relations with Mr. Todd on a more intimate footing and hints flirtatiously how happy they'd he down By the Sea. But Todd's mind has been twisted by hate and he thinks only of Judge Turpin and Johanna, now incarcerated in a madhouse.

Mrs. Lovett's new help, Tobias, is fearful of Todd, but no one will harm her, he promises, Not While I'm Around. Suspicious that he suspects something, she locks him in the bake-house. Upstairs, Beadle Bamford has arrived and is playing Parlour Songs on the harmonium. He has come because there have been complaints about an unpleasant smell from the bake-house, and he'd like to take a closer look - which Todd arranges by slitting his throat. The smoke from the chimneys have also drawn the attention of the crazy beggar woman, who shrieks her warning of City on Fire as Todd's scheme races to its conclusion: Johanna is rescued by Anthony, the Judge joins the Beadle in the furnace, as does the foolish madwoman.

Only then does Todd recognize her: his wife, his beloved Lucy, the one person in the world his poisoned heart still loved. And, because Mrs. Lovett lied and made him think Lucy was dead, he has killed her. He takes his twittering landlady in his arms, they dance and he flings her in the furnace before he, in turn, is killed by Tobias. When Johanna, Anthony and the police arrive, the boy is grinding the mincer: the gruesome finale to The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.

Song List:

Act I:

  1. The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd - Company
  2. No Place Like London - Sweeney, Anthony, Beggar Woman
  3. The Barber And His Wife - Sweeney
  4. The Worst Pies In London - Mrs. Lovett
  5. Poor Thing - Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney
  6. My Friends - Sweeney, Mrs. Lovett
  7. Green Finch And Linnet Bird - Johanna
  8. Ah, Miss - Anthony
  9. Johanna - Anthony
  10. Pirelli's Miracle Elixir/The Contest - Tobias, Pirelli, Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney
  11. Wait - Mrs. Lovett
  12. Kiss Me - Anthony, Johanna
  13. Ladies In Their Sensitivites - Beadle, Judge Turpin
  14. Pretty Women - Judge Turpin, Sweeney
  15. Epiphany - Sweeney
  16. A Little Priest Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney

Act II:

  1. God, That's Good! - Tobias, Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney, Ensemble
  2. Johanna - Anthony, Sweeney, Johanna, Beggar Woman
  3. By The Sea - Mrs. Lovett
  4. Wigamaker Sequence; The Ballad of Sweeney Todd (reprise) - Todd, Anthony, Quintet
  5. The Letter - Quintet
  6. Not While I'm Around - Tobias, Mrs. Lovett
  7. Parlor Songs - Mrs. Lovett, Beadle, Tobias
  8. Fogg's Assylum; Fogg's Passacaglia - Company
  9. City On Fire - Company
  10. Searching (part 1) - Mrs Lovett, Todd, Beggar Woman
  11. Searching (part 2) - Anthony, Johanna, Beggar Woman
  12. Judge's Return - Sweeny, Judge
  13. Final Sequence - Company
  14. Epilogue: The Ballad of Sweeney Todd

Song: Pretty Women

Pretty women Fascinating...
Sipping coffee,
Dancing... pretty women
Pretty women
Are a wonder.
Pretty women!

Sitting in the window or
Standing on the stair
Something in them cheers the air.

Pretty women
Silhouetted...
Stay within you,
Glancing... stay forever,
Breathing lightly...
Pretty women,
Pretty women!

Blowing out their candles or
Combing out their hair,
Even when they leave
They still are there.
They're there

Ah! Pretty women, at their mirrors,
In their gardens,
Letter-writing,
Flower-picking,
Weather-watching.
How they make a man sing!

Proof of heaven as you're living,
Pretty women! Yes, pretty women!
Here's to pretty women,
Pretty women,
Pretty women,
Pretty women

Taken from the original cast recording.

Reviews:

Sweeney Todd

by Richard Morrison, The Times, 7th July 2007 (4 Stars)

The demon barber of Fleet Street is back in town, and those of a nervous disposition are advised to sit well away from the front stalls at the Festival Hall. There will be few sights in the West End this summer more terrifying than that of Bryn Terfel leaping into the audience, gleefully searching for his next hapless customer – his face locked in a psychotic leer, his voice like thunder, his razor slashing like a scythe.

The Southbank Centre’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s dark, satanic melodrama is billed as semi-staged. The text has been given what Sweeney himself might call a neat trim (losing the Judge’s nasty anthem to self-flagellation is no hardship). There is no scenery, costumes or even the usual spurts of ketchup as Sweeney’s razor embarks on its enthusiastic orgy of serial revenge. Presumably the Southbank management did not want splodges on its pristine new platform.

But what David Freeman’s staging lacks in accessories it more than supplies in energy. A brilliant young ensemble from the Guildford School of Acting evokes a London full of potential Sweeneys: malignant, demented, cruel. At the end all the singers pull out razors and slash their own throats. It’s a shock that Freeman has concocted before (in his production of The Beggar’s Opera, back in the 1980s, everyone produced a noose and hanged themselves), but it effectively caps a performance in which the chorus’s words and movement are as sharp as Sweeney’s shaves.

They are backed by a lively London Philharmonic Orchestra, tucked away to the side and immaculately conducted by Stephen Barlow. But the show is rightly dominated by two tremendous performances in the centre of the stage. The first is Terfel’s. Opera purists may regret hearing the mightiest Wagnerian voice of our age piped through amplification. But what a terrifying embodiment of malevolence! It’s all the better for being gradually unleashed, like a gathering storm. Maria Friedman provides the perfect foil as a joyously amoral Mrs Lovett, proud maker of “the worst pies in London”. Her comic timing is immaculate and her diction superb, especially in that show-stopping, macabre waltz Have a Little Priest, in which she whips up a froth of sexual frenzy for Sweeney.

Round them are suitably grotesque cameos, notably Philip Quast’s smarmy Judge, Steve Elias’s creepy Beadle, Adrian Thompson as the caricature Italian barber Pirelli, Rosemary Ashe as the crazed Beggar Woman, who is more than she seems, and Daniel Evans as the simpleton Tobias, who finally dispatches Sweeney with his own razor. Emma Williams gives a nicely frenetic performance as the repressed Johanna, though she sometimes raced ahead of the beat; and Daniel Boys is an appealing Anthony.

Possibly the most blackhearted Broadway musical ever penned, Sweeney Todd is still an acquired taste. And it’s not exactly stocked with golden melodies. But you are unlikely to see it hurled out with leaner, meaner incisiveness. Two further performances today.

Sweeney Todd

by Simon Thomas, musicOMH.com, July 2007. (4 stars)

The Royal Festival Hall's presentation of Sweeney Todd is much more elaborate than we might expect from a "semi-staging", with all cast members in some semblance of costume, extensive props and most of the podium for the company to work on.

With the band swept into a corner, David Freeman's groupings and use of the resources he has at his disposal is characteristically imaginative and goes a long way towards overcoming the limitations.

Stephen Sondheim seems to have become accepted into the music establishment of this country but, with a sub-standard Sweeney Todd at the Royal Opera House a couple of years ago and a provincial rep-style Into the Woods at the Linbury recently, he's overdue for a decent production if this cross-over into the opera house is to prove fully justified.

Without the distractions of a scrappy staging, and with a successful blend of opera and musical singers, this concert version of Sondheim's dark masterpiece in one of London's premiere music venues helps validate his elevation to the portals of high art. Opera singers (Bryn Terfel and a vocally agile Adrian Thompson) work alongside top-notch musical stars (Maria Friedman, Philip Quast, Daniel Evans and Emma Williams) and there's a wealth of Sondheim experience among them.

Terfel, who played the title role in Chicago a few years ago, storms the stage, a wild bull of a man with his heart torn out. Like Thomas Allen at the Royal Opera before him, he's an enormously powerful Sweeney, truly terrifying in his Epiphany when he comes into the audience and picks out individuals to terrorise with his lust for vengeance.

There are cuts (no pun intended) and the main victim is Judge Turpin, who loses his "Mea Culpa" number, thus reducing his part considerably. It's a shame because Philip Quast (himself a potentially fine Sweeney) sings beautifully what's left to him. In his "Pretty Women" duet with Terfel, we see the sparring of two great performers.

Friedman is maybe the most revolting Mrs Lovett I've seen, a dumpy overgrown doll, with a wildly funny physical characterisation and great timing. The versatile Daniel Evans is an impish Toby, a far cry from his Olivier Award-winning turn in last year's Sunday in the Park with George. He manages to steer clear of the exaggerated Cockney acting that can mar the part, something that Rosemary Ashe's Beggar Woman doesn't quite avoid.

As the ensemble, the production uses the considerable talents of students from the Guildford School of Acting Conservatoire, who fling themselves around the stage energetically and people the grim world of Victorian London with relish. The young lovers, Anthony and Johanna, are ably sung by Daniel Boys (a contestant in the BBC's recent Any Dream Will Do talent show) and a sweet Emma Williams.

If not as fleet-footed as the best Broadway, or occasionally West End, production, a concert version of a show like this can really gain in orchestral sound (what theatre could hope to compete with the Royal Festival Hall's mighty organ which thunders out a tremendous cadenza at the beginning of the piece?). The London Philharmonic under Stephen Barlow revels in the composer's sound world, full of chromatic picture painting and lush, almost sentimental, beauty. Who but Sondheim could pull off a number where a man sings a beautifully tender ballad while slicing throat after throat?

The amplification of the singers isn't great and it doesn't prevent the orchestra overwhelming them at times, meaning some loss of the all-important words. So much of the power of Sondheim's writing derives from Christopher Bond's play, on which it was based. With its acute social observations and metaphors for a society devouring those at the bottom of the heap, it's not just Sondheim's extremely witty lyrics that get lost when the words aren't clear but something much deeper

Sweeney Todd has to be Stephen Sondheim's masterwork. It's a score you can never tire of hearing and this four performance run is a hugely enjoyable reminder of why it's sure to be revived for years to come.

“Sweeney Todd”

Theatre Addict Blog, July 7th, 2007

Semi-staged concert. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephen Barlow. Director: David Freeman. With Bryn Terfel (Sweeney Todd), Maria Friedman (Mrs. Lovett), Daniel Evans (Tobias), Daniel Boys (Anthony), Emma Williams (Johanna), Philip Quast (Judge Turpin), Steve Elias (The Beadle), Rosemary Ashe (The Beggar Woman)…

I had been lucky to see Bryn Terfel’s masterful take on Sweeney Todd at Chicago’s Lyric Theatre in December of 2002… so I had great expectations for this semi-staged presentation, and rightly so because it turned out to be a hugely enjoyable experience.

Terfel brought a rare intensity to the part. Most of the time he sounded like each syllable could have cut through steel. He was outstanding throughout. Maria Friedman was a very good surprise, as her voice was fuller and more powerful than usual. She went 200% for the laughs and didn’t miss one. (She’ll be forgiven for her blank halfway through “A Little Priest” — thank God Terfel knew her lyrics, too — and for offering Tobias his bonbon far too early during “While I’m Around.”

The rest of the cast was equally excellent, with the always reliable Philip Quast impersonating a fine Judge Turpin and a new face to me, Daniel Boys, as one of the very best Anthony’s I’ve seen

The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave a fine rendition of Sondheim’s beguiling score. There were a lot less musicians than at the New York Philharmonic concert a few years ago, but the magic worked perfectly in the fine new acoustics of the hall

Do musicals deserve opera stars?

Bryn Terfel is playing Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. I wasn't convinced by the idea, but he proved to be a cut above most of the cast.

by Judith Flanders, theblog theatre&performing arts, Guardian Unlimited, 6th July 2007

As consumers of the arts, audiences often move easily from one form to the next. We can visit exhibitions by the Old Masters and Tracy Emin with a swift round of gigs or grand opera in between. However, I don't think I'd pay to see Eminem in Oklahoma! or Tracy Emin painting in the style of the Old Masters. After all, being good at - and trained for - one thing doesn't mean you will be good at something else.

But somehow reality shows, talent shows like Any Dream Will Do and a generalized suspicion of "elitism" and contempt for training have made many people think that anyone can do anything, if only they have a panel of experts on hand and a big enough name to fund the experiment. So I approached Bryn Terfel in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with extreme scepticism, even suspicion. How would he feel, I muttered, if a musical-theatre star decided he wanted to sing Wotan? Pretty cross, I answered myself smartly.

Well, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Not only can Bryn Terfel sing Sondheim as well as he sings Wagner, but he also makes (with one notable exception) the rest of the cast at this semi-staged short run of Sondheim's masterpiece look embarrassingly inept.

To be fair, this group is clearly short on rehearsal time - they have got together for only three days of performance - and they are wildly uneven in skills and experience. At the strongest end of the range is Philip Quast, star of Evita and South Pacific as well as an impressive list of straight theatre (he was a weak-willed Trigorin in a performance of The Seagull that still haunts me). Quast has the vocal skills and acting ability to provide Terfel with an admirable foil. The Pretty Women duet shared by his Judge Turpin and Terfel's mad barber was devastating in its homoerotic undercurrent as well as in its vocal power.

But experience is not all. Maria Friedman has oodles of experience and a raft of awards, all for musical theatre, and yet her embarrassingly loony-tunes performance as Mrs Lovett may go down in history as the only known singing version of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She was both inaudible and incomprehensible, as were the two poor waifs brought in for their television names. As Anthony, Daniel Boys (a contestant in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Any Dream Will Do) was simply a black hole where a performer should have been, a charisma-free zone of startling proportions. As Johanna, Emma Williams (Where the Heart Is, Four Feathers) sang as though she was coming in to land at Heathrow, madly circling each note until she made a rapid descent towards it.

I am hard on these two relative beginners, but then Sondheim is a hard taskmaster. Both Anthony and Johanna are viciously difficult singing roles - exposed, technically almost malign - and if you can't do it, you shouldn't mix with Philip Quast or Bryn Terfel. They will make you look like the newbies you are, not because they are unkind but because they have years of graft, piles of technique and amazing skills under their belts.

Audiences, like performers, gain experience through watching. If an opera singer can perform musical theatre, go for it; but if a musical-theatre actor can't sing and can't act, I think they'd be better off staying far away from those who can.

Making the cut with the mighty Bryn

by Fiona Maddocks, Evening Standard 6th July 2007

No one until now has quite settled the argument as to whether Stephen Sondheim's bloodthirsty melodrama Sweeney Todd is an opera or a musical. The South Bank Centre has come up with the only solution. It is truly both. By casting the two lead roles - the demon barber of the title, and his low-life accomplice, Mrs Lovett - from each of these opposing spheres, the production endorses the work's properly hybrid nature.

Bryn Terfel, who first sang Sweeney in Chicago five years ago, is a phenomenon, equally at home in the heaviest Wagnerian role and the lightest of favourite Welsh ballads. For this grand guignol performance he has created an entirely new vocal personality, embracing evil with silken, caressing pianissimos, or roaring, seething anger.

His physical control and facial contortions are masterly, especially when expressing contained, twitching fury.

As Mrs Lovett, whose cannibalistic meat pies take recycling to new levels, Maria Friedman is brazen, responsive and saucy, her musical and comic timing impeccable. She wholly merits her reputation as one the finest stars of British musical theatre. She and Terfel together, sparking off one another, show Sondheim's uneven work in its best light. Chorus and supporting soloists, especially the hilarious Pirelli of Adrian Thompson, were lively, though ensemble was occasionally hazardous.

In this semi-staging, the London Philharmonic players were seated to the side of the stage, leaving an awkward space for the performance. Despite this, and despite unsubtle lighting and terrible amplification - no doubt a technical learning process in the new Festival Hall - director David Freeman conjured a sharply detailed performance.

Conductor Stephen Barlow held all together with calm assurance. Coming soon, the film version with Johnny Depp. A popular choice, but will he match the mighty Bryn?

Bryn Terfel Shaves the Day

Sweeney Todd at the Royal Festival Hall

Intermezzo, July 6th, 2007

Watching a musical theatre piece without a full staging did sound as if it could be worryingly like watching Shakespeare being read out round a table, but in the event this 'semi staged' performance was really not bad at all.

The open stage with the orchestra in the corner, the office furniture that served as props and the please-supply-your-own costumes made the venture look like a school play.

But if all the budget was blown securing the services of Bryn Terfel in the title role, it was worth it. He clearly relishes this part, and every second he spent on stage was magic. And it wasn't only his singing - although, predictably, Bryn handled this magnificently, Sondheim doesn't demand a great voice or really give his Sweeney many places to go musically. He was just genuinely scary. When he stepped off the stage and into the audience at the end of the first act to sing about his plans for murderous revenge, he stood about six inches away from me at one point, dripping sweat (yeah, the air conditioning's something else that needs fixing) and I nearly pewped with terror.

There weren't any disappointments elsewhere in the cast either. Close your eyes and there were some rather ropy voices here and there - most were singing actors rather than classically-trained voices. But with the careful attention paid to movement and blocking, and the assured characterisations, this emerged as very much a theatre piece rather than a musical one in any case. Only where heavy orchestral arrangements buried the voices (Sondheim's fault more than the performers') did any weakness really become apparent. Maria Friedman's Mrs Lovett was hilarious, a perfect visual and musical foil to Bryn Terfel.

The young chorus impressed with their precise ensemble and amazingly clear diction - surprisingly a lot better than what I've been hearing recently at the ENO. With a piece like this, where the music is ultimately no more than a cushion to support a dazzling text, that really mattered.

We would like to thank Marie, and David for providing us with the information on the reviews.


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