This year I got an opportunity that I was really excited about. I got to go and see an amazing concert performance of ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’. Not one for younger audiences, this piece is a little dark and gory, but it’s one of my all-time favourite musicals, composed by a true inspiration to me, Stephen Sondheim. This concert performance was very special, since it was being moved from New York for just 13 performances with the English National Opera.
The production featured opera star Bryn Terfel in the title role, a barber who, because of his traumatic past, decides to kill his clients, and academy award-winning actress Emma Thompson as Mrs Lovett, Sweeney Todd’s Baker neighbour, who puts the dead bodies into her pies. Both gave an incredible performance, with Terfel naturally having a strong voice, while Thompson surprised with her voice, considering it’s been a while since she last had a musical theatre part. Thompson acted opposite Robert Lindsay in Me and My Girl in 1985 and has had other performances on the west-end stage, but this was her first west-end performance in 25 years.
Since I know the story quite well already, I was hopeful that seeing this version live on stage would bring something new to it for me, and I wasn’t disappointed. The staging and direction of this piece was so clever and immediately I realised that I was seeing something very special. The show opened with an air of elegance, in the style of an operatic concert, with the principle actors walking on and setting up their lyric books on music stands in front of the orchestra on stage. But midway through the first song, Terfel threw his music book to the floor, and before long, the rest of the cast joined in, as they knocked over the floral arrangements and tore apart the piano at the centre of the stage. Emma Thompson ripped off the sleeves of her concert dress to reveal a more character-fitting costume underneath and Bryn Terfel put on a long leather coat, taking on the role of his character. Eventually the piano became part of the stage and the rest of the concert continued in a more acted-out fashion. This was such a clever way of opening the show, immediately getting rid of any of the audience's illusions about the production, and making the statement - this is a dark, dramatic story and that is the way we are going to tell it.
The orchestra was also used very cleverly, since as they took up a large amount of the stage, they were used almost like props for some sequences. When Thompson needed a chair, she simply asked the cellist if she could borrow his, and when she was flirting with Sweeney Todd she borrowed the conductor’s baton as a prop, while a timpani drum became the Baker’s work surface. This was a clever way of melding the music and the story together as one, allowing the dramatic telling of the story, whilst still in a concert style.
I think that the staging and direction of this production have to be commended and the entire cast were fantastic, though specifically the two main stars. It was such a creative telling of a story that I love, and must be one of the best evenings of theatre I’ve ever experienced.
Image from: http://static.london-theatreland.co.uk/images/show/12246_show_portrait_large.jpg
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