The Tale of Sweeny Todd

Tonight was the much anticipated AOS performance of Sweeney Todd. It was with mixed feelings I sat down to watch the show. Nomi should have got the part of Mrs Lovett... so I wanted to see the reason why she was second.

The opening scene left my jaw on the floor, a massive set with a well constructed scenery laid out in front of us... far better than anything I've ever seen them use before.

When Sweeney entered the stage my first thouht was... "this is a perfect choice"... my second thought however was "isn't he short"... not that the charcter playing Mrs Lovett was tall, just that my mental image is her being shorter than him. Sadly that was the first of many dissapointments.

The first and largest was the accent and singing ability of Mrs Lovett... ranging from thick east end cockney (Or rather mockney... it was so forced it was comic) to choral operati c in places, it just prooved to jarring to the mind listening to it.

The second was the character of Toby... played by a 16 year old boy... who sadly was 7' something tall... rather a startling contrast to Sweeney. But with a truely beautiful voice. I couldn't work out if he was nervous or acting the part of a scared boy. Either way it addded well to the character.

The last was Pirellis moustche and wig... it just looked rediculous. Everyone elses makeup and wigs looked fantastic, so why couldn't they pull of this one?

The lighting and music was second to none, along with the fantastic set and a minimalist chorus made the show supurb. By far and away the best bit was the barbers chair actually having the tipping mechanism :-)

The last few scenes had some gore in, the previous scenes it was all implied, but the deaths of the key characters all had SFX makeup... a shame this couldn't have been used throughout, but I understand the logistics of using all that fake blood.

All in all a excellent performance, and cattyness aside the only change I'd make is to recast Mrs Lovett.

Picture Courtesy of Tina Hood-Liles