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Performance times are: Mon-Sat 19:30. Mar12 20 at 19:00. Wed,Sat Mats 14:30
Synopsis
Following sell-out success at Chichester Festival Theatre,Jonathan Kent’s acclaimed production of Sweeney Todd transfers to London’s Adelphi Theatre for a limited season. Widely acknowledged as Stephen Sondheim’s musical masterpiece, Sweeney Todd stars distinguished musical performer Michael Ball as the eponymous demon barber of Fleet Street and Oscar-nominated actress Imelda Staunton as the devoted Mrs Lovett.
Set amongst London’s seedy side streets and laced with Sondheim’s characteristically brilliant wit and dark humour, the musical depicts Sweeney Todd’s savage quest for justice and retribution after years of false imprisonment. Aided and abetted by the pie-shop owner, Mrs Lovett, he sets out to avenge the wrongs done to him and his family.
Combining a brutal sensibility with elements of English music hall, Sweeney Todd offers a fascinating portrait of a man driven to madness by injustice.
Michael Ball in Sweeney Todd. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore
Date: 21 March 2012
Jonathan Kent's Chichester Festival Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opened last night (20 March, previews from 10 March 2012) at the West End's Adelphi Theatre. The show will play a limited season to 22 September 2012.
Michael Ball stars as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street alongside Imelda Staunton as his pie-making partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, and both are lavished with praise by the critical press who give the acclaimed Chichester production an equally warm welcome to London.
The show transfers to the Adelphi following a Whatsonstage.com Award-winning run in Chichester in 2011 which earned the show the Best Regional Production gong at this year's Awards.
"Sweeney Todd has arrived at the Adelphi trailing clouds of hype and glory, much of it fully deserved. The performances of Michael Ball… and Imelda Staunton… will remain definitive for a very long time. But I do have qualms… about the musical itself … Sondheim says Sweeney is a movie for the theatre, and his invocation of Alfred Hitchcock… is uncannily matched in Ball's slow prowl around the stage … I'm not sure, either, about Anthony Ward's imposing circular set … Otherwise, the technical presentation is perfect … Fairy lights aside, Mark Henderson's use of harsh and murky lighting, with rare pools of warmth, is exceptional … There are very strong support performances from John Bowe as an emphatically perverted, self-flagellating judge and Gillian Kirkpatrick as the harpie-like beggar woman whose proximity to the action catches up with her big time in the Rigoletto-ish final scenes; “I Love Lucy” might be a clue to her relationship with a man called Ball."
[W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/SweeneyTodd_CFT_mar2012_360.jpg#360#240#Michael Ball & Imelda Staunton in Sweeney Todd. Photo credit: Tristram Kenton[/W@S_IMG]"Jonathan Kent's production of Stephen Sondheim's gore-soaked musical is dark and dazzling by turns, and utterly hair-raising … Thanks to the brilliance of Sondheim's score and lyrics, and stunning performances from a cast led by Staunton and an almost unrecognisable Michael Ball as Sweeney, a macabre horror story becomes both diabolically funny and genuinely tragic … As Sondheim's music soars, there's a vocal explosion, as if this Victorian penny dreadful had ignited decades of rage and suffering. Ball's grim, vengeful anti-hero is mesmeric … When Mrs Lovett suggests her queasy get-rich-quick scheme, he flashes a toothy, lupine grin … Staunton is nothing short of astonishing. She's hilariously adept with Sondheim's comic rhymes, and an earthy, gritty-voiced delight as she attempts coquetry with Ball. But she also conveys a devastating loneliness and longing … This is a production crammed with detail, vivid, nightmarish, and exhilarating. Bloody marvellous."
"In this transfer from Chichester Sweeney Todd is staged and sung and acted with verve. Professionalism at every turn. A top band. For all this showmanship, the nastiness overwhelms … I left the Adelphi impressed but sickened. Sweeney Todd is a dark night. Imelda Staunton deploys all her comic talent as Mrs Lovett … Every time her sparrow frame steps on stage, the pace quickens … Michael Ball’s Todd wears a whitened face in his first scene, along with a long lick of straight, black hair … There is, he reasons, nothing unusual about cannibalism. In the modern world do men not effectively consume other men all the time? … John Bowe and Peter Polycarpou do grand turns as a baddie judge and his beadle … A subplot of Johanna (Lucy May Barker) and her wet boy-friend (Luke Brady) barely smoulders. Everything is subservient to the evil of Todd and his glinting razors. Director Jonathan Kent delivers spectacle. The whole thing is done with artistic oompf. But my neighbour, in her late 40s, repeatedly hid behind her hands and children will be given nightmares."
"Jonathan Kent's production, which has now transferred from Chichester, and which leaves me grasping for superlatives, has given the piece a fresh look without destroying its essential fabric … We now watch as a 20th-century chorus of the working poor retell the legendary fable of the demon barber … But Kent's chief achievement is to heighten the violent shifts of tone in Sondheim's masterly music and lyrics and in Hugh Wheeler's book … The performances are as bold and striking as the concept. Ball presents us with a skilled barber nursing a private grievance … Ball charts every stage of Sweeney's descent … Imelda Staunton, with equal command, plays Mrs Lovett as a pinafored loner … Staunton not only gives the evening its comic counterpoint, but confirms her great gift for discovering the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary. Luke Brady as a lyrical sailor, Lucy May Barker as Sweeney's imprisoned daughter, John Bowe as a self-flagellating judge, and Peter Polycarpou as his sadistic henchman are all first rate … This is a superb achievement which proves that Sondheim's musical thriller has genuine social resonance."
[W@S_YOUTUBE]#-n89wHEl_Wo###[/W@S_YOUTUBE]"In my view, Sweeney Todd is Stephen Sondheim’s best show and one of the greatest musicals of all time … Most of my colleagues raved about Jonathan Kent’s production when it opened in Chichester last year, but I had reservations that this welcome West End transfer doesn’t entirely allay. It strikes me as downright perverse that this grisly musical melodrama… should have been updated to the 1930s … But that is enough nitpicking. There is far more to commend than to criticise … Michael Ball, best known for cosy campery, is now tremendous in the title role … He has a splendidly brooding stage presence … It is also impossible to praise too highly Imelda Staunton’s performance … Some of the supporting performances could do with more oomph, and Lucy May Baker seems particularly bland and vocally strained as the persecuted heroine … This Sweeney Todd will chiefly be remembered for its stomach-churningly gory razor killings, with blood squirting over the shop, and the thrillingly perverse chemistry between Ball’s terrifying demon barber and Staunton’s deliciously chirpy pie-maker."
Dominic Maxwell The Times ★★★★★
"From the moment that an industrial whistle blows and the ensemble sings an operatic chorus from high up on Anthony Ward’s metal set, the mood is dark and entrancing … By the time that Ball enters as Sweeney … we’re already halfway to Hell … But the real horror comes from the palpable progress towards damnation as our vengeful hero loses his moral bearings amid slit throats and human pies. Ball is terrific … And Staunton? Startlingly good. She finds something surprising but true in every line as Mrs Lovett … You won’t see a richer performance this year. There is excellent support too, from John Bowe as Judge Turpin, Peter Polycarpou as Beadle Bamford, Lucy May Barker as Sweeney’s daughter Johanna, Luke Brady as the sailor who loves her and James McConville as our antiheroes’ scrawny surrogate son, Tobias. But what really registers is how perfectly Kent controls the tone as we flip between the romantic and the discordant, the horrific and the comical, sometimes within a line. It’s an evening of glorious shades of grey; an absolute bleedin’ triumph."
"If you think you know Michael Ball, think again. The popular lyric baritone is almost unrecognisable as the demon barber of Fleet Street … It’s a chilling performance, sinister and saturnine … He is a revelation as the gory slasher whose desire to avenge a wrongful conviction turns into a crusade … Imelda Staunton is more than the perfect foil. At times, in fact, she threatens to steal the show … She gets some of Sondheim’s best lyrics and brings a busy comic energy to them. All the while she yearns touchingly for the affections of the grimly plotting Sweeney. It’s a rich and layered interpretation. In Jonathan Kent’s operatic production, the black comedy is matched by notes of tragedy … The action isn’t always as suspenseful as it needs to be. There’s too much emphasis on peripheral characters. Yet Sondheim’s varied, complex score is intelligently served … There’s some assured support, chiefly from Robert Burt as rival barber Pirelli and James McConville as Pirelli’s assistant. This is an atmospheric Sweeney Todd, an unsettling musical thriller made razor-sharp by its two superb leads. When Ball and Staunton aren’t on stage we are impatient for their return."
Last season’s Chichester Festival Theatre production of Sweeney Todd has arrived at the Adelphi trailing clouds of hype and glory, much of it fully deserved. The performances of Michael Ball as the avenging demon barber and Imelda Staunton as a bustling, bravura, pie-eyed Mrs Lovett will remain definitive for a very long time.
But I do have qualms, not queasiness, about the musical itself, which Jonathan Kent’s penetrating and powerful production does not entirely allay: the second act parlour songs of Beadle Bamford (Peter Polycarpou) outstay their welcome; the love story of the wandering sailor and Sweeney’s lost daughter is under-written; and her birdcage song is one of several banal, over-ingratiating items.
And although the second act recovers from the tactical error of bathing Mrs Lovett’s pie shop in fairy lights and Cockney oompah-pah (Sondheim’s grasp of London/Victorian idiom is shaky throughout), the show does fade away musically after the magnificent trance-like sequence in which the most lyrical “Johanna” motif is threaded through the stalking rhythm of Sweeney’s cut-throat armchair theatrics.
[WOS_QU@TE]#The performances of Michael Ball as the avenging demon barber and Imelda Staunton as a bustling, bravura, pie-eyed Mrs Lovett will remain definitive for a very long time#[/WOS_QU@TE]Ball, with a Hitler quiff and a glazed expression, marks with terrifying insouciance the exact Macbeth moment when his revenge mission flips into general psychopathic release. Sondheim says Sweeney is a movie for the theatre, and his invocation of Alfred Hitchcock and in particular the film scores of Bernard Herrmann – scraping strings, thudding rhythms, dark stirrings – is uncannily matched in Ball’s slow prowl around the stage, buoyed on tense purpose.
Perhaps he could unbutton a little more in the waltz explosion with Mrs Lovett at the end of the first act – “Have a little priest” -- but he’s leaving all the fiddly stuff to Staunton, who even manages to make of “Beside the Sea” (one of the weaker, less convincing songs) something poignant and hilarious.
I’m not sure, either, about Anthony Ward’s imposing circular set, with the chorus chiming in from the gallery. It must have been ideal for the vast open spaces at Chichester, but looks a bit cramped here, and two spiral staircases are always going to be one too many. Sight lines, I suspect, might be suspect around the edge of the stalls.
Otherwise, the technical presentation is perfect, with superb musical direction by Nicholas Skilbeck and good sound design by Paul Groothius. Fairy lights aside, Mark Henderson’s use of harsh and murky lighting, with rare pools of warmth, is exceptional; Sweeney caresses his friends, his knives, in huge sharp blades of illumination. The Victorian period is loosely rendered in the costumes, and Hugh Wheeler’s book is helped towards the end by a suggestion that “health and safety” might have played their part in exposing corruption and criminality.
And there are very strong support performances from John Bowe as an emphatically perverted, self-flagellating judge and Gillian Kirkpatrick as the harpie-like beggar woman whose proximity to the action catches up with her big time in the Rigoletto-ish final scenes; “I Love Lucy” might be a clue to her relationship with a man called Ball.
About the only thing I have in common with Michael Ball is that the only previous production of Sweeney Todd we had both seen was John Doyle's actor-musician version. Although it's better to hear Sondheim's score given the benefit of a full pit orchestra, I'm not sure a much larger scale production is necessarily an improvement and certainly the updating to the 1930s makes no sense whatsoever of a story concerned with transporation, beadles and Bedlam. The ensemble has very little to do and the show is at its best when concentrating on just two or three characters. Of the supporting cast John Bowe (who has sadly expunged Corrie from his CV) and Peter Polycarpou are excellent as the judge and his beadle but the younger actors are swamped by the orchestra and the demands of Sondheim's difficult lyrics and it's a mystery how one of them got beyond the auditions. Of course the whole show revolves around Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett and it is here that this production really scores. Michael Ball is physically and vocally transformed and it's a terrific reminder that he is a genuine musical theatre ACTOR and not just a "dimpled butterball" (Broadway.com) in a series of funny costumes, eg Edna, Fosca, etc. Imelda Staunton gives a quite astonishing performance as a very funny Mrs Lovett, brilliantly conveying the complex lyrics and her warped feelings for Sweeney but transforming into chilling evil during the harrowing last scene. This is a very amusing production at times but that closing section achieves genuine macabre horror. However it's significant that even an excellent production of possibly his best musical featuring a huge fan's favourite has failed to make Sondheim a success at the box office - the Adelphi was far from full on a Friday night. - David Baxter
13 May 12
I went to this production on a Monday evening and the whole audience rose at the end in a spontaneous show of appreciation.Ball and Staunton were superb. I have seen Sweeney Todd four times previously and this was by far the best production.Razor sharp, thrilling,chilling, shocking and yet oh so funny in parts.Sondheim's score and lyrics are his most brilliant.This is a great great production of a great great musical. Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd ! You won't be sorry you did. - Rob
04 May 12
Bloody Brilliant. Career defining performances from Staunton and Ball. More ramblings here http://frontrowdress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/sweeney-todd-adelphi-theatre-thursday-5.html - Front Row Dress
07 Apr 12
Given its hugely successful pre London run in Chichester with so much positive commentary about this production, I arrived at the Adelphi Theatre last week with pretty high expectations. I can say without question that I was not disappointed; in fact, even my high expectations were surpassed by this compelling production that drew me in from the start and kept me hooked to the very end.
The harsh, mechanical set creates a chilling air which pervades throughout the direction and acting in this production. The moment when Todd is re-united with his blades, the villainous look in his eyes as he sings of his “friends” while Mrs Lovett looks on from behind with sheer lust on her mind, made me shudder. This production feels much darker than other versions I’ve seen.
Which brings me on to the two central performances - Michael Ball with those dark eyes and glazed expression is almost unrecognisable, delivering an incredible performance as his Sweeney descends deep into hell. This is quite possibly the performance of his career, a role which he masters completely. When I heard about this production I couldn’t think of an actress better suited to the role of Mrs Lovett than Imelda Staunton and she doesn’t disappoint. The true villain of the piece, she owns the stage with a total command of both the darker and comic sides of her character, making us both laugh and shiver. Where with previous Mrs Lovett’s, I felt just a glimmer of a heart, especially in her relationship with Toby, this time she has absolutely no time for anyone or anything other than determined pursuit of Sweeney. We’re left in no doubt she would and indeed does do anything for him. Quite simply, Staunton is outstanding delivering one of the finest performances I’ve seen in any musical in years.
There is some fine support too, in particular John Bowe as the Judge and Peter Polycarpou as Beadle Bamford who both brilliantly capture the very evil, sadistic nature of their characters.
Some years ago, I saw the National Theatre’s Sweeney and thought it would be hard to better, especially because of the, for me, “definitive” Mrs Lovett as played by Julia McKenzie. It’s perhaps still a little too soon to talk about this production of the performances in “definitive” terms but I’m quite certain it will be spoken of for years to come as one of truly great productions of this Sondheim masterpiece.
- Paul Wallis
02 Apr 12
I was disappointed by this production. Imelda Staunton is very good indeed and Michael Ball is fine, although his permanently glazed expression is a bit odd and his accent varies from cockney to Eton. The major negatives are (1) the update to the 20s/30s simply doesn't work - I don't think Bedlam was in operation then, and beadles went out of fashion rather earlier - the update merely causes pointless anachronisms; and (2) the set - maybe OK at Chichester but not at the Adelphi with its poor sightlines: the front stalls loose everyone below the knee and the back stalls loose the top 50% of the set. With top-price seats a jaw-dropping £67.50 and a large proportion of top-price seats in effect restricted view, potential ticket buyers need to be warned. - P. Hodgson
30 Mar 12
I saw this show 5 times in Chichester last year and thought then this was such a thrilling,brilliant production and the TWO leads MY hero Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton are just FANTASTIC,What a performance from Michael, in my mind the BEST thing on stage he has done (so far!)they deserve the HIGHEST of praises and am sure are in the running next year for a award each, I saw the London show on 17th March at the Adelphi and I must say I thought it was EVEN BETTER,what a show and what a audience reaction at the end, SO proud of you Michael and YOU DID IT!!! - Jill Clark
29 Mar 12
It was OK I would say, no more and no less. I felt that the production misses the dark heart of the story. I remember years ago I saw John Doyles magnificent actor musician production that sent a shiver up my spine and transfixed me, this didn't achieve that at all. I felt that it desperately wanted to find that dark side but ended up with more west end cheese. However Imelda Staunton is amazing, not only a spell binding actor but also has a great singing voice, and Sondheim's music as ever is brilliant; but Micheal Ball?? What are these stories of people not knowing it was him all about? It is very clearly him and he gives a brave stab at a part really outside his casting range but I just didn't believe him at crucial moments. He was presenting an angry man rather then inhabiting one and too many moments rang false. Still I'm sure his hordes of fans wont care. - tel
29 Mar 12
As good a rendition of this musical as I can imagine. There is murder and cannibalism and revenge galore, so those of a faint disposition should stay at home. Imelda Staunton is a national treasure, who never puts a foot wrong, and here she is superlative, incredibly funny, yet believably materialistic and dark. Michael Ball is commanding, his unnerving stillness contrasted with Staunton's hysterical jerkiness. A great production! - steveatplays
28 Mar 12
SWEENEY TODD - Certain aspects are excellent and better than most of the productions I have seen previously, but others less successful. General staging is effective, but some odd choices with set and updated design which mix period and consequently jar somewhat. Ball is moody, brooding and ponderous but not especially menacing or edgy enough for the role. He was an odd casting choice, but manages stillness which is quite an achievement for him, but the lack of physical energy hasn't been substituted for intensity. He needs lessons from Anthony Hopkins on how to keep still but convey menace on stage ("Pravda" was one of the most extraordinary productions I ever witnessed). Imelda Staunton 'gets it'... ALL OF IT. Mrs Lovett's last chance grasp of happiness which she wants SO desperately, her matter of fact ability to rise above the squallor and even qualify the disgusting choices which her situation require her to make, the tickled-pink tawdry humour which gets her through life. She is quite brilliant in the role and keeps the production on track. I thought Julia MacKenzie's (1993 National Theatre) performance was definitive, but Staunton matches and perhaps even eclipses it. Johanna and Anthony as the young leads were poorly cast, neither with an especially good or appealing voice and without sublime innocence and beauty, they rather disappear and become forgettable which is quite a failing for the story. First half is excellent but the production dips slightly in the second half. - S King
28 Mar 12
Given all the hype, I was expecting big things from this production but even I could not have predicted quite such a brilliant production.
Superbly staged, an excellent ensemble led by Michael Ball giving the performance of his life and Imelda Staunton proving even more comfortable in this role than I thought. They are both outstanding and this is one of the finest productions of Sweeney Todd I have ever seen. Highly recommended - Paul Wallis
Originally the Sans Pareil built by a merchant called Scott to display the talents of his daughter. Opened on 27 Nov 1806 with Miss Scott's Entertainment. Became the Adelphi in 1819. The original theatre was demolished in 1858 and replaced with a bigger one which, with many alterations, remains. Restored to its 1930s form. 1500 seats. Society of London Theatre member.
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