Anthony Hope Daniel Broad Sweeney Todd Steven Page Beggar Woman Gillian Kirkpatrick Mrs Lovett Beverly Klein Judge Turpin Malcolm Rivers Beadle Stephen Briggs Joanna Lucy Schaufer Tobias Ragg Christopher Saunders Pirelli Adrian Thompson Jonas Fogg Paul Wade Conductor James Holmes English Norther Philharmonia Chorus of Opers North This terrific concert performance was part of the 1970s ("all that glitters...") section of Towards the Millenium. I'm not sure whether Sweeney Todd (first produced in 1979) has much to do with the 1970s -- as an American's reflections on the essence of Englishness it looks to me more like restitution for Oliver! (or belated retribution for Paul Bunyan). Of course, the Brecht revival and student performances of the Marat-Sade went on into the 1970s. Maybe Sondheim just let everything mature for longer. I initially thought it was a bit of a cheek Opera North doing a work that's so centrally about London. But this isn't the Victorian London that was cleaned up by mains water and sewage, and the other good works of civic corporatism, though the programme notes quote Mayhew and Dickens). It's a Caligari-city that forms the backdrop to a gruesome comic fairy story. The comedy is based on an excess of food, violence and language in the midst of desperate deprivation. It has as much to do with Aristophanes (fanstasies of quasi-cannibalistic plenty and private revenge in Acharnians. Peace, Ploutos), and Rabelais (exuberant lists and typologies, as well as food and guts again) as with W.S. Gilbert or the music halls, which are the up-front models. The music merges a range of styles, including oblique takes on standard musical and music-hall numbers, 1930s Weill and cod folksongs and ballads remniscent of Britten's Beggar's opera, as well as some operatic allusions (maybe Mrs Lovett's dream of the seaside is like Tosca's little cottage) into a similarly unconfortable comic whole. Sweeney Todd's inevitable decline, and his loss of interest in his daughter Joanna, are not tragic, though there are echoes of King Lear and Titus Andronicus. The course of events is more like a sketch where a clown starts knocking things over and everything he does creates more havoc. Only with blood. Sweeney Todd's final discovery that the mad beggar woman is his lost wife is an inverted romance closure, but in this production at least it seemed to be an afterthought, motivating him to stand still for Tobias to kill him. Though his death seems inevitable anyway as the conclusion of the absurd multiplication of violence started by the judge. Opera North have done a staged version of Sweeney Todd as part of their regular season. (I think Andrew Cooper reviewed it a couple of months ago.) The singers wore the costumes from this production, which were in period, and their acting was mildly burlesqued. I don't know if there was more to the production than that. The main point of it should have been to deliver the words and music, which is quite enough to be going on with in this case. The concert performance was superb in most respects. The singers were a mixed lot, though all of them did their parts well. Beverly Klein as Mrs Lovett was much more at home in the music-theatre style than the others. Steven Page as Sweeney Todd was definitely scary, and his singing became increasingly intense during the performance. Stephen Briggs as the Beadle was good and pompously oily. The chorus, with many individual roles, was excellent, and at times got the words over much more clearly than the soloists. The orchestra, next to the chorus and behind the soloists on the stage, sometimes overpowered them, but was otherwise fine. This performance was sold out well in advance. The audience was ecstatic, and laughed at the jokes even when the words were inaudible -- it was a bit like a middle-aged Rocky Horror audience. I wonder if it would be worth the ENO doing Sweeney Todd? I'm sure it could pack the Coliseum.