Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Lyric Theatre, Belfast

Sweeney Todd runs at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast until 23 February 2019.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Will I ever tire of seeing Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd? I don’t think so, not when it’s the catalyst for so much inventive reworking and resuscitation. For me, it’s Sondheim’s greatest, most satisfyingly complete work (and probably has the strongest book of all of his shows), and like the best of Shakespeare it’s endlessly malleable.

Walter Sutcliffe’s current production inhabiting the rather lovely Lyric Theatre in Belfast – in conjunction with Northern Ireland Opera – is one such production. It’s not without its flaws, but it takes the familiar and gives it enough tweaks to give even the most die-hard Sondheimites something new to enjoy. And if you’ve never seen the show before, it’s a pretty good introduction to a wonderful musical.

Steven Page is well cast as the wronged barber who escapes transportation and returns to London to exact revenge on the corrupt Judge who sent him down. With a haunted look and deeply resonant baritone voice, Page is a Sweeney to be reckoned with. He in fact returns to the role he already tackled with much acclaim with Opera North (1998, revived 2002) and in a production in Brisbane, Australia. He cuts quite a terrifying figure when fully enraged – his ‘Epiphany’ is most impressive.

Julie Mullins is Sweeney’s partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, and the pair are well matched. London-born but raised in Australia, Mullins sounds right at home in the cockney-voiced role, and makes the most of Wheeler’s comedy lines. Forget that she’s a former star of Neighbours – there’s no stunt casting here. Okay, she’s a little unsteady with the lyrics at times, but has the acting chops to style it out and is a joy to watch.

At the other end of the singing spectrum are Northern Ireland Opera’s John Porter and Jessica Hackett in the roles of Anthony and Johanna. Mixing opera and musical theatre voices can often be jarring but, in this case, both lend gravitas to the company and are a natural fit. Yes, the acting is secondary but the gorgeous singing makes up for two parts that admittedly don’t have a lot of flesh on the bone.

Jack Wolfe and Matthew Cavan pair up well as Tobias and Pirelli. Wolfe is born to play the role of the much-put-upon street urchin, and gobbles it up enthusiastically. He’s also got a fantastic voice, which he puts to great effect not only in his big solo moment, ‘Not While I’m Around’ (beautiful) but in the usually-cut ‘tooth-pulling’ number.

In this sequence, Pirelli challenges Sweeney to a shave and – nice touch – drags a poor unsuspecting audience member from the stalls as a ‘volunteer’. Usually that’s where the song ends, but Sondheim wrote a second verse about tooth-pulling. Here, Sutcliffe reinstates the whole thing, including Tobias’ shrieks of agony, all of which are scored by the composer. It’s rarely staged but when done right, as it is here, it’s a pure delight and it rightly garnered the biggest cheer of the night.

It helps that Cavan – perhaps better known on the cabaret drag scene as Miss Cherrie Ontop – is a wonderfully over-the-top Pirelli, with a stunningly good voice and totally assured grasp of the character. (And for once I didn’t cringe at the Oirish accent when he reveals his true identity of Daniel O’Higgins.) Bravo!

Mark O’Regan and Richard Croxford are nicely cast as Judge Turpin and the Beadle. O’Regan at times struggles with the vocals – his (disappointingly truncated) auto-flagellation scene pushes his voice to the limits, I suspect – but he nevertheless terrifies as the monstrously ‘pious vulture of the law’, especially given his Steven Tyler/Ozzy Osbourne rock-star look. Croxford is much more comfortable with his voice and is the perfect foil for the Judge, even if decked out in all his Regency finery.

Rounding off the principals is Elaine Hearty as the Beggar Woman. No problems here with the voice, so it’s a particularly nice treat to hear her tackle the ‘Beggar Woman’s Lullaby’, another number that’s often cut.

MD Sinead Hayes conducts a luscious-sounding nine-piece band that balances perfectly with Ian Vennard’s (often incredibly loud) sound design – or at least when the mics are turned on correctly. A few little slips here and there were slightly distracting, as were the rustling of head mics turned up to 11. It’s almost rock-concert level, but for this show, it kinda works.

In fact, the rock-like soundscape plays an important part in the most notable feature of this production: the styling. It’s got a very operatic sensibility in its grandeur, and set and costume designer Dorota Karolczak has pulled out all the stops for a steampunk-meets-Tiger-Lillies-meets-Max-Headroom nightmare.

It’s a bizarre yet surprisingly effective mash-up of styles – as previously mentioned, the Judge looks like a Rolling Stone yet his Beadle is straight out of Barry Lyndon; Pirelli is Russell Brand; Mrs Lovett has stepped straight out of a Hogarth sketch; the ensemble is Daft Punk. How do you make Tobias seem small and urchin-like? Bring him on wearing a giant hat in Act I (‘Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir’), then in Act II (‘God, That’s Good’) give him an enormous pie. All very trippy.

It’s only under ultraviolet lighting that we see the blood of Sweeney’s victims, so you can add CSI to the mix, as this also heavily inspires the design. Props are wheeled off but only after being draped in polythene by mysterious dark-suited men, and body-bags of meat dangle from the ceiling, all adding to the forensic feel. The set also blends seamlessly from the stalls, and only the spattered paint tells you where the stage actually begins. And much of the action takes place within the audience. Are we attending the tale or actually part of it, complicit in it?

(There is a very neat touch when Sweeney kills his first customer – I won’t spoil the surprise but get ready to jump!)

Intensifying this already-very-intense setting is Wolfgang Göbbel’s lighting design. A 2011 winner of the ‘Knight of Illumination in Opera Lighting’, Göbbel throws long, dark shadows over the stage, creating enormous Nosferatu-like shapes against the back wall. Some scenes work almost like shadow theatre, ramping up the Grand Guignol feel of the piece.

At other times, though, the lighting can be overwhelming, especially with the overuse of distracting gobos that cover too much of the action in darkness. The whole last sequence is bathed in a series of moving tree-branch patterns that makes it almost impossible to determine what’s going on. The woman next to me commented at the end how lucky she was to know what happens, as otherwise she’d have no idea. An apparent lack of followspots at the theatre doesn’t help.

So, on the whole, an assured production that will dazzle with its spectacular staging and strong ensemble. The joy for me – a Sweeney regular – is in the detail, and director Sutcliffe gives us plenty of nice little touches. I don’t want to give too much away, but for example I’ve never seen Sweeney’s lightbulb moment with the Beggar Woman play out as it does; and when Johanna, dressed as a sailor, leaves the crate in which she’s hidden from Sweeney, she makes eye contact with the Beggar Woman and the two (mother and daughter) have the briefest of moments before Sweeney barges in – beautiful.

Craig Glenday