Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd a musical or an opera? Some may think, because it is being performed at the London Coliseum, it’s an opera; but it is billed as a musical. Sondheim calls it a musical thriller. It has a striking score and clever and witty lyrics.
Bryn Terfel, who plays the crazy barber, is a great bass baritone whose roles include Figaro, Falstaff and Wotan. Emma Thompson, who plays his partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, pie-maker extraordinaire, is a highly skilled film actor. The last time she was on the musical stage was when she appeared in Me and My Girl thirty years ago.
Lonny Price’s semi-staged production was conceived for the New York Philharmonic in 2014. It is quite unlike any staged concert performance I have seen. It is certainly the most theatrical. Singers share centre stage with ENO’s orchestra.
Sondheim has transformed a sensational Victorian “penny dreadful” into a musical masterpiece; and it really is brilliant that the most haunting music (“Johanna”) should be sung at the very moment when Todd is slitting throats in his barber’s chair. The audience actually longs for another murder so that they can hear the song again.
Terfel’s Todd, vocally and physically immensely impressive, is, unmistakably, a tragic figure. Mrs Lovett, on the other hand, is conceived along popular music hall lines and is acted by Thompson with unabashed comic gusto.