Sweeney Todd musical review: Emma Thompson revels in the black humour at the Coliseum

This production, starring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel, is an intoxicating treat, says Henry Hitchings
A thrilling work of musical theatre: Bryn Terfel with Emma Thompson (Picture: Photo by Alastair Muir/REX)
Henry Hitchings26 April 2015

Sweeney Todd is one of the most thrilling works of musical theatre, and it’s a treat to hear Stephen Sondheim’s infectious, varied score performed by a 58-piece orchestra. This is a staging that fulfills director Lonny Price’s promise of something “big and loud and scary: a large scream on a large canvas”.

Bryn Terfel must surely be the most gifted singer who has ever played the demon barber of Fleet Street. The towering bass-baritone has a voice that’s simultaneously dark and flexible. He achieves moments of bloodthirsty ecstasy, but there are also notes of stately severity.

This is a Sweeney who’s capable of both mischief and a magnificent stillness. As his doting accomplice Mrs Lovett, enthusiastically turning his victims into meat pies, Emma Thompson revels in the writing’s black humour. She sings well, imbues many of her lines with witty originality, and brings an impeccable sense of timing to everything.

Although Price’s production is advertised as “semi-staged”, it swiftly feels more than that. It begins as a concert performance — the cast neatly arranged at music stands, holding their copies of the score. But soon the polite conventions are overthrown. A piano is turned upside down, bloody handprints start to proliferate, and graffiti spreads across the back wall.

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The casting is unusually opulent. Philip Quast captures the tormented potency of creepy Judge Turpin, while Rosalie Craig is a striking Beggar Woman. Elsewhere there’s meaty work from John Owen-Jones and Jack North.

Remarkably, this isn’t the only high-class interpretation of Sweeney Todd currently playing in central London. A few hundred yards away on Shaftesbury Avenue there’s a superb boutique staging that originated at Tooting Arts Club. The much more lavish account here at ENO is less sharply focused. I’ve seen the story’s demonic horrors and air of Victorian sensationalism more fully realised. But there is plenty to savour — Sondheim’s mixture of gore, comedy and romance is intoxicating.

Until April 12 (020 7845 9300, eno.org)

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