Sweeney Todd  Len Cariou
Mrs Lovett    Judy Kaye
Anthony Hope  Davis Gaines
Judge Turpin  Mark Roper
Johanna       Annalene Beechey
Tobias        Michael Cantwell
Beggar Woman  Pia Downes
Beadle        Neil Jenkins
Pirelli       John Owen Jones

Conductor     Julian Kelly
Director      Paul Kerryson

"Twentieth anniversary London concert production --- for one night only!"

Except that the added a matinee at 4pm which ran until 7.15, didn't seem to
sell many tickets, and left the cast and orchestra 45 minutes before they
had to do it all again. The orchestra part in the finale sounded from the
balcony foyer like a particularly brutal performance of the Rite of Spring,
which was the most interesting thing about this performance, although as
all taking on tickets and programmes went to Crusaid I can't be too
negative about it. I'm afraid I shipped out at the interval, though.

The advertised concert production was in fact nearly fully staged, with the
principals and ensemble soloists in period costume, a low-tech but complex
two-level stage behind the orchestra, Les-Mis style movement and lighting
and amplification which exposed the singers who couldn't really and didn't
do much for those who could. There was one major nasty in the staging of
the first part: the narrated events in Poor Thing were acted out, and Lucy
was identifiably the beggar woman. Len Cariou got lots of spots, but it was
generally pretty smooth.

Cariou, though, who has not done the role since the first Broadway run, was
wooden and voiceless. The sound setup seemed to be designed to make him
just about tolerable. Judy Kaye as Mrs Lovett had a accent that varied
according to her territura when she was putatively singing and at random at
other times. She only got over the obvious lines, and nearly muffed even
"Lord those pussy cats are quick", which probably takes some doing.

Annalene Beechey was a tweety Johanna, which was quite effective and might
have been acting or good casting. Davis Gaines was aimiably daft as
Anthony, with a generic but acceptable English accent. The rest of the cast
were pretty good, but not particularly integrated in what is, after all, a
one-off (now two-off) production.

The orchestra -- not identified in the programme that I could find -- was
also pretty good considering, often weird in an interesting way,
occasionally Stravinskian.

Maybe I've had enough of the "meat is murder" theme for the moment. There
were a few strange resonances between Sweeney Todd and James McMillan's
Ines de Castro, on television the night before, including a demented
abandoned wife and a cannibal feast. McMillan's opera has a classical
structure, similar to a Jacobean revenge drama or a bel canto opera (I
think the play on which it is based is modern). But a chorus of modern
paparazzi with programmes for the gory public events of the opera, a modern
teenage girl to whom Ines narrates her story (the Spanish mistress of the
son of the king of Portugal, she is murdered as an imagined traitor and
then dug up and enthroned as queen while her murderer is, well, you don't
want to know), and a semi-comic executioner don't quite work. But Helen
Field as Ines was superb.