SWEENEY TODD. To 28 March
Hornchurch.
SWEENEY TODD
by Chris Bond.
Queen’s Theatre To 28 March 2009.
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 19, 28 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 28 March 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 25 March.
Captioned 18 March.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 01708 443333.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 March.
Can be creepy, but more often creaky.
No play has so conspired to put itself in the shade as Chris Bond’s version of George Dibdin Pitt’s Victorian melodrama about a murderous barber and his human-pie baking accomplice. Bond turned Sweeney from a murderer for gain into one with attributes of Jacobean Drama’s revenger and malcontent, thereby, presumably, attracting Stephen Sondheim to use the play for his musical.
Which in turn was filmed by Tim Burton. So this is like going back to Pygmalion after My Fair Lady, you wonder why the tunes don’t come. And the static exposition seems dull compared with Burton’s camera hurtling Todd, back from overseas, to his Fleet Street home.
In 1968 the play might have convinced. Melodrama was being rediscovered as a popular genre with a radical flavouring, suiting a time when the misfit was sympathetic. Now, it’s noticeable how chunks of Pitt’s worthy, wordy speeches clog the action. Bond wrote for Stoke-on-Trent’s Vic, a theatre-in-the-round. Mark Walters’ Hornchurch set tries hard, with angled side walls suggesting a world awry and other walls sliding or folding as the action relocates. But it’s clumsy stagecraft for 2009.
Only late on does Matthew Eagland’s lighting go beyond general gloom to create a limelight-like menace. And only late on does Bond seem to invite laughter. It’s right he should take the story seriously; melodrama has too often been an excuse for parody. It was the TV-equivalent drama of its day and gripped its audiences. But it can seem ludicrous now and a few on-purpose laugh moments could help focus attention more seriously elsewhere.
A piano-and-violin duo aptly provide the ‘melo(dy)’ in the drama. But a director other than the author might have challenged actors to be bolder with the script. Too many performances lack excitement, with Shaun Hennessy’s Sweeney seeming merely sullen, his hopeful young friend and his love Joanna inexpressive.
Stuart Organ’s villain-judge provides some sense of moral weighting and Gregor Henderson-Begg has a suitably sympathetic innocence as assistant to anyone who asks. Diana Croft brings sexual vitality and lifelike moral equivocation to Mrs Lovett. But the evening overall remains largely a 1960s museum-piece.
Beggar Woman/Mrs Todd/Piano: Lindsay Ashworth.
Anthony Hope/Piano: Sam Kordbacheh.
Sweeney Todd: Shaun Hennessy.
Mrs Lovett: Diana Croft.
Johanna: Lucy Thackeray.
Beadle/Piano: Julian Littman.
Judge Turin/Bald Man: Stuart Organ.
Tobias Ragg: Gregor Henderson-Begg.
Alfredo Pirelli/Jonas Fogg/Watcher: Simon Jessop.
Violin: Carol Sloman.
Director: Chris Bond.
Designer/Costume: Mark Walters.
Lighting: Matthew Eagland
Musical Director: Carol Sloman.
2009-03-12 13:43:36