Sweeney Todd, theatre review: Emma Thompson returns to London stage after 25 years in absurdly deluxe ENO production

The English National Orchestra's London Coliseum becomes the site of murder most foul - but Bryn Terfel and Thompson make it palatable

Paul Taylor
Wednesday 01 April 2015 21:04 BST
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A scene from Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim London Coliseum starring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel
A scene from Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim London Coliseum starring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel

Lonny Price's semi-staging of Sondheim's masterpiece – a version of which was unveiled in New York last year - comes to the English National Opera with Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson reprising the central roles and a full orchestra.

For an incredulous minute or two, you are tricked in thinking that they are going to suffocate this tale of warping obsession and throat-slitting cannibalistic revenge with “concert performance” refinement.

But then Terfel flings his book to the floor – a gesture of mutiny that sets off a riot of insubordination. Floral arrangements are swiped over and a curtain torn down; the grand piano is upended; tuxedos are ripped off to reveal vests imprinted with the “logo” of the evening – a bloody hand-print.

Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel in Sweeney Todd

Emma Thompson, making her first London stage appearance in 25 years, brings a wily music-hall-Cockney sense of comic timing and mastery of the insinuating pause to Mrs Lovett (at one point she swiped the conductor's baton with she titivate Sweeney's hair) but it's all pretty broad and the character's prattling, fake-motherly amorality never chilled me to the marrow, as it did watching Imelda Staunton and Julia McKenzie.

Theatre-goers fond of making invidious comparisons may feel that they are in for a treat at the moment because this production of Sweeney Todd coincides with that of Tooting Arts Club and it is poles apart from their unnervingly claustrophobic, site-specific version in a pop-up pie shop on Shaftesbury Avenue.

Each, in fact, has its own strengths, demonstrating once again that classics are susceptible to very varied treatments. At ENO, there's the thrill that the huge glorious orchestra is literally centre stage, functioning as the set, with instruments doubling as jokey-sinister props (as when poor Toby has to mince human flesh through a trombone) and the swarming thirty-strong chorus is electrifying in its confrontational suddenness and massed vocal power.

Terfel is gradually becoming one of the great exponents of the role of Sweeney and in addition to the majestic bass baritone voice, he brings a haunting sense of aloneness to the part, singing a love-song to his rediscovered razors with a scalp- tingling raptness and wholly oblivious of Mrs L and her concurrent monomaniac flutings about him.

Here Terfel also gets to duet with Philip Quast who finds an almost sympathetically troubled soul in the villainous (here beautifully sung) Judge. The casting is almost absurdly deluxe.

To April 12; 020 7845 9300

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