50 Favourite Musicals: 1d: SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (1979) (Stephen Sondheim)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life. So here we are...  a year and 10 months in the making and we have reached the stage musical that is my favourite ever - and I cannot name one out of the four shows that I have left to consider.

I have tried every criteria, every angle and there is simply no way I can say that one of the four is better than the other.  So let's go... my Top Four Number One's (in alphabetical order)

First performed: 1979, Uris Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1985, Half Moon Theatre, London

Productions seen: ten

Score: Stephen Sondheim

Book: Hugh Wheeler

Plot: Sweeney Todd arrives back in Victorian London, rescued from a floating raft by young sailor Anthony,  He visits the Fleet Street pie shop of the widow Nellie Lovett who recognises him as Benjamin Barker, the barber who worked above her shop fifteen years before.  Barker was transported to Australia by the corrupt pair Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford so the Judge could rape Barker's wife Lucy.  Mrs Lovett tells Sweeney his wife poisoned herself and his young daughter Johanna is now the Judge's ward who he intends to marry.  Mrs Lovett presents him with his old razors and he starts to work again, plotting his revenge - and as the bodies pile up, Mrs Lovett has a solution...

Five memorable numbers: A LITTLE PRIEST, THE WORST PIES IN LONDON, THE BALLAD OF SWEENEY TODD, JOHANNA, PRETTY WOMEN
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In 1973, while in London for the UK premiere of GYPSY, Stephen Sondheim went to the Theatre Royal Stratford East to see Chris Bond's version of the melodrama SWEENEY TODD.  Sondheim enjoyed the Grand Guignol atmosphere and how street songs were incorporated into the action but what really excited him was how Bond changed the plot from a penny-dreadful melodrama into a revenge thriller with Sweeney seeking vengeance on Judge Turpin: an idea was born.  In 1979, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF LONDON opened on Broadway starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury and, the following year, in London with Denis Quilley and Sheila Hancock and although audiences couldn't warm to the American take on a London villain, London has since taken the show to it's heart as was Sondheim's original wish - the original production (despite it's short run) won the Olivier Award for Best Musical and it has since won two further Oliviers for Best Musical Revival.

Over time I realised I could happily watch a good production of SWEENEY TODD every day.  I have seen it ten times with only two productions I didn't like - a ghastly am-dram one at the Bloomsbury Theatre in 1992 and the actor/musician John Doyle production that most loved but just got on my nerves.  I think eight out of ten is a very good batting average.  The show is a good example of why Sondheim always gives praise to his book writers.  Hugh Wheeler's book for SWEENEY is a classic of musical storytelling, there are nine main characters who are all vividly drawn and it not only stands up to repeated viewings but the book always throws up things I had never noticed before; despite the different directorial takes on it, it just *works*.  Sondheim's score acts as an aural fog that whisps, curls and evelopes the characters through the plot, not only through the songs but the relentless underscoring that happens throughout the show, which gives the audience a feeling of foreboding... that all the characters are on a moving path to a very dark place.  What I particularly love about the show is, after the introductory "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" which gives you a flavour of the ominous atmosphere of the show, you are pitched right into the action with Sweeney and Anthony arriving in London, having their first meeting with the Beggar Woman, and onto the visit to the Pie Shop and the first appearance of Mrs Lovett - all within ten minutes.

Then you are off on the wonderful runaway ghost train that is SWEENEY TODD, an unstoppable ride to it's shattering conclusion.  As I have often said, the final 20 minutes of the show - if done right - should be one of the most relentlessly scary things you can experience, even if you know the show  It has an internal motor that if stoked properly keeps gathering pace leaving dead bodies in it's wake and an icy, clammy grip on the back of your neck.  My first introduction to the musical was through the Broadway cast recording which, for me, is still is the definitive version of the score, capturing the remarkable performances of Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury.  In 1981 the US tour was filmed in Los Angeles with Lansbury's outrageous, glorious turn as Nellie Lovett immortalised with George Hearn, partnering her perfectly as Sweeney.  It's interesting that when first offered the role Lansbury hesitated - she pointed out the show was called SWEENEY TODD and was reluctant to play what she felt was a less-than-lead role.  Sondheim 'auditioned' some of Mrs Lovett's songs for her and she realised that she was being given the chance to create from the ground up such a memorable character and she was onboard.  My first experience seeing it live was at the long-gone Half Moon Theatre in 1985, directed by Chris Bond, the writer of the original play that Sondheim had seen 12 years before.  It was wonderful to see it finally and to see the book and score working as one, and it starred Leon Greene's larger-than-life Sweeney.  In 1989 I saw it again, this time on Broadway at the Circle In The Square, the first of many 'chamber' versions of the show, with Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler as the killer couple.

SWEENEY made a triumphant return to London in the National Theatre's production directed by Declan Donnellan in 1993.  Staged again in a 'chamber' version, it was a wonderfully thrilling production with an excellent cast of Alun Armstrong as Sweeney, Adrian Lester as a charismatic Anthony, Barry James as Beadle Bamford and Denis Quilley, London's original Sweeney, now playing Judge Turpin.  But they were overshadowed by Julia McKenzie's magnificent Mrs Lovett - a gin-soaked cockney harridan, hilarious and amoral.  She deservedly won the Olivier Award for Best Actress and later, when the show transferred to the larger Lyttelton Theatre shared the stage with Quilley again, this time returning to the role of Sweeney,  Sadly this was the last Sondheim role Julia played onstage.  The production never had a cast recording issued but the Radio 4 full-length broadcast is available on YouTube.  In 2000 the Bridewell Theatre - too close to Fleet Street for comfort - staged a prominade performance with a memorable Mrs Lovett from Jessica Martin.

In the 2010s I saw three contrasting versions: Chichester gave us Jonathan Kent's dingy between-the-wars version with Michael Ball as Sweeney and Imelda Staunton as Mrs Lovett.  Imelda gave us an all-too-real Mrs Lovett, gimlet-eyed and itching to be respectable, while Michael Ball downplayed his natural exuberance to almost a monotone.  I then saw the concert version at the London Coliseum directed by Lonny Price starring Bryn Terfel as Sweeney who of course sang the bejesus out of it and Emma Thompson finally onstage again as Mrs Lovett, playing up the comedy but also finding the step-up to the drama at the end.  It's a key moment in the second act when, while singing "Not While I'm Around", Tobias realises that Sweeney killed his boss, and, attempting to distract him, Mrs Lovett joins him in singing that nothing's going to harm him; you have to feel the murdererous intent behind the grotesque comedy harridan at that point - it's always a chilling moment and the great actresses who have played the role such as Lansbury, McKenzie, Staunton and Thompson can manage that transformation with ease.  The last production I saw was in 2016 in a final-year production by the Royal Academy of Music's Musical Theatre students, what made it special was it was at the Theatre Royal Stratford East where 43 years before, Sondheim first saw Chris Bond's original.

Again, a true wealth of video is available for SWEENEY TODD on YouTube - as I said, the full Radio 4 broadcast of Denis Quilley and Julia McKenzie in the NT's production is there - so I shall stick with that production and Julia's full-throttle "Worst Pies In London" from that year's Olivier Awards ceremony...



Then Bryn Terfel's Sweeney and Emma Thompson as Mrs Lovett delighting in her new receipe for meat pies in "A Little Priest"



and finally, the music-hall out-front performance of Lansbury, secretly laying her own plans by giving George Hearn's Sweeney only some of the truth in "Poor Thing":



I hope you have enjoyed reading about these 50 great musicals as much as I have blogging about them...