Picture: Steve Gregson
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, performed by students from the London School of Musical Theatre at the Bridewell Theatre, London, continues until 3 May 2024.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Many’s the tales of Sweeney Todd I’ve attended, from a pie shop in Tooting to the luxury casting of Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball in the West End, to the gory splendour of the Châtelet in Paris, one I wish I hadn’t bothered with in Reims and countless more, but none has caught the raw, visceral intensity or macabre wit of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece better than this stunning version director Graham Hubbard has created for the London School of Musical Theatre.
Two years ago Hubbard frightened the life out of Performance Preparation Academy audiences in Guildford with his vision of the ‘demon barber of Fleet Street’ with a Sweeney so up close and personal we could see the whites of his eyes, his crazed madness and his lust for revenge as he prowled the aisles. This was a further development that transported the story into the modern era – loved the Lidl and Tesco bags for the Beggar Woman’s sparse belongings – and even changed a couple of sexes, though I had seen a female Pirelli before. Indeed, her dead arm was in my lap in a cramped pie shop. And a sassy, hard-nosed, flick-knife-toting Beadle Bamford with a Scouse accent – well, why not?
To have a director who has spent so much of his life working Sweeney out, as a performer, associate director on Broadway and in the West End, on national tours and other colleges holding their hand has brought so many hidden depths out of these one-year students they will forever be in Hubbard’s debt. Whatever they go on to achieve, he has given them a Sweeney Todd they will never forget.
When a production is split into two casts as here (amusingly and appropriately the Steak and Kidney casts – I saw the Kidney), inevitably one can only comment on half of them but when I say Alex Maxwell, brooding, bored and frightening in the title role and Lydia Duval, as Mrs Lovett, the best woman’s part Sondheim ever wrote, get everything exactly right and do themselves mighty proud, I am told by my LSMT mole that Finn Tickel and Emma Bate from the Steak team are equally impressive.
When you have Sondheim’s exquisite lyrics to deliver, as in material like ‘A Little Priest’, ‘My Friends’ and ‘Pretty Women’ and the experience of a director like Hubbard to guide you, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to produce truly great theatre. To their great credit, Maxwell and the obsessed Duval take it, the latter’s skittish, hilarious ‘By the Sea’ right up there with Staunton at her best.
So too does Aaliya Mai as the best Beggar Woman I’ve ever seen, totally inhabiting this small but important part, while Shaun Jeffries, a newcomer to musical theatre, is a convincing Tobias, deserving every bit of the applause for the captivating ‘Not While I’m Around’.
I’ve seen the shaving contest done with more brio and humour but no blame attaches to Rachel Duncan whose Pirelli has plenty of presence and is spot-on with fake accent and real one. Jack Kiteley is in fine voice as Sweeney’s young pal Anthony Hope and the self-flagellation scene with the perverted Judge Turpin (Theo Bracey) is given a subtly erotic edge as the judge chastises himself for spying on his young ward Johanna (Sophie Alibert) as, in silhouette behind an opaque screen, she undresses.
The upside-down human torsos gushing blood and hanging from pulleys like animal carcasses are scary enough in themselves without all the throat-slashing. And clothing the ensemble in matching white boiler suits of slaughterhouse workers, all challenging the audience not to be petrified, is clever. Also hard to forget: Alice Hamilton’s piercing scream as Lucy and the finality of Sweeney slamming the door at the end. The quality of the singing is strong throughout.
Full props to MD Huw Evans and his band of six who have a high old time with Sondheim’s brilliant score (book by Hugh Wheeler), to Bob Sterrett for eye-catching contemporary costumes, and good to see Saffi Needham, who set the movement for Hubbard’s Sweeney at PPA (where she trained), doing the same job at the Bridewell.
But from producer Adrian Jeckells downwards this is a fabulous team effort and when you get change from a £20 note for a ticket, getting the worst pies in London is not such a hardship. For no extra charge you’re almost site specific with Fleet Street just round the corner. Couldn’t find that barber shop though…
Jeremy Chapman
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