Sweeney Todd
The Royal Opera House, Friday 9 January 2004
Review by Emma Shane
© January 2004
Can Opera Singers, and British Opera singers at that do musicals? Should
the Royal Opera House be putting on Sondheim? And is Sondheim’s
Sweeney Todd a Musical or an Opera?
Well in answer to the last question, Sweeney Todd is one
of Sondheim’s more operatic-type pieces, both in terms of the singing
styles required for certain characters (such as Johanna, and also Anthony);
besides which, I think there are quite a few composers whose work bridges the
divide between Opera and Musical Theatre. Composers such as
Arthur Sullivan, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill,
Leonard Bernstein, and now Stephen Sondheim can’t really be
entirely categorised as one thing or the other, and why should they be?
However, when their work is sung by opera singers, it does make a difference if
the Musical Director, musicians, and singers, are sensitive to the work in
question, and interpret the music with feeling, rather than just technique. The
big question, to my mind was whether the singers in this production would do
that? The casting for this production is illustrious; and I already knew that
some of the singers would be capable of performing this piece as performers
rather than just singers: Thomas Allen after all has sung extremely well
on quite a number of Musical Theatre recordings, William Dazeley
has proved himself very capable of singing the odd showtune
on BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night, while Rosalind
Plowright demonstrated that nobody does it
like she does in Two’s A Crowd. But what
about the rest of the cast, in general, and leading lady Felicity Palmer
in particular?
The show, or should I call it “the piece”, starts with
the chorus on stage. Almost immediately one feels it’s going to be a
pretty good production. The chorus sing clearly, perhaps benefiting from having
Terry Edwards as their Chorus Master, he occupied that role on many of John
McGlinn’s
EMI Classics studio cast recordings of various musicals. Now for the principals. First of all, of
course Sweeney Todd himself (Thomas Allen), and his sailor friend
Anthony (William Dazeley). It is soon
apparent that Thomas Allen lives up to his reputation for being able to
act, William Dazeley is also entirely
satisfactory. Just as they are taking their leave of each other, a minor, or
perhaps not so minor, prinicpal comes on, The Beggar
woman (Rosalind Plowright), begging for alms
for a poor woman, and half way through this, raising the hem of her skirt
to reveal her bloomered legs (in a manner which might
make one think of the girls raising their legs in Can Can).
When I saw a production of this piece at The Bridewell
Theatre a few years ago, this was one character who
spent most of the first act being pretty much unnoticeable. But in this
production, such is Rosalind Plowright’s stage presonce, we simply can’t
help but notice her as a defined character, from the moment she appears. Which is quite possibly a good thing, because it establishes this
mysterious character so much better.
Sweeney has to find himself lodgings, and there is only one place he
wants to go, Mrs Lovett’s pie shop. A
deft piece of scene changing, involves several of the chorus wheeling
on a barrow-like table, which Mrs Lovett (Felicity Palmer), is perched.
Once in position on stage she steps off it, and the barrow is then put down in
position to form her table. It’s really quite an entrance, and very effective.
Having entered she promptly launches into The Worst Pies In London. When you have a Sondheim song and indeed
a role that has been inhabited on the
Having partaken of
some refreshment, Sweeney Todd enquires about the room above the shop, if times
are so hard why isn’t it let? Mrs Lovett promptly explains, Poor Thing,
that everyone believes the room the be haunted, because it used to be occupied
by a barber and his wife, but a judge and a beadle conspired to have him
convicted, and then invited the wife to the judges home where she was raped and
subsequently swallowed poison. The Judge adopted,
their infant daughter. Then Mrs Lovett recognises Sweeney, he is that very same
barber Benjamin Barker. She goes over to a trap door in the stage, and pulls
out a box, which she presents to him, his razors, which she has kept hidden for
him these fifteen years. Sweeney is delighted, My Friends, now he
can be a barber again. Thomas Allen sings wonderfully clearly, and with
convincing conviction.
Every scene change in this show, involves one or more of the performers,
usually (but not always) members of the gentleman’s chorus, dragging white
curtains across the stage. Anthony also enters. We are now outside Judge
Turpin’s house, at a window (represented by lowering a rail across the stage
and having members of the chorus push on a balcony on wheels, upon which
Johanna (Rebecca Evans) is standing, lamenting her existence, she’s like
a bird in a cage, Green Finch And Linnet Bird. This is one of the
more operatic numbers in the piece that truly benefits from being performed by
someone who is primarily an opera singer rather than a show singer. Rebecca
Evans sings clearly, and really does this aria (and it should be called an
aria rather than a song) the justice it deserves, she is infinitely better than
the woman who portrayed Johanna in The Bridewell
production.
While she has been
singing, a Bird Seller (Jonathan Coad) pushes
on a cart loaded with cages. This is another role which had been rather
unremarkable in The Bridwell’s production, perhaps partly because it was
in-the-round. However, although its a very small part,
Jonathan Coad manages to make the most of it.
It is a part that isn’t always credited in cast-lists, it was probably
originated by Spain Logue, later
notable US productions featured Ted
Keegan and Tim Turbin
in the role; But in some productions, such as the 1985 London revival and the Bristol Old Vic production of the late
1980’s, it has been played by a woman. Anthony,
having immediately fallen in love with Johanna, has a brief and rather amusing
conversation with the birdseller, who explains the
birds are blinded, so that not knowing if it is night or day they will sing all
the time. Anthony buys one as a present for Johanna, Ah Miss, but
the Judge enters, wrings its neck, and tells Anthony that’s what he’ll do to him
if he ever catches him near Johanna again. That distinctive Beggar woman sweeps
on asking for “alms for a poor woman”, and raises the hem of her skirt
to reveal her legs again; for those of us who already know the plot, it’s clear
there’s a reason for her being around such a scene, and one begins to wonder,
maybe this character knows very well who Johanna’s real parents are.
Meanwhile Johanna’s
foster-parent, the Judge, is chiding his ward to obey his wishes, and a
distraught Anthony vents his frustration on what is left of the bird’s cage, and vows to steel her away which was a rather good
performance from William Dazeley, Johanna
In a market place, a barber named Pirelli is peddling a miracle elixir
to cure baldness. Well to be precise, most of the work in ‘selling’ this
product is being done by his boy assistant Tobias Ragg
(Doug Jones). It is worth mentioning at this point that Doug Jones
is yet another singer in this production who proves to be very able at acting,
and dancing around the stage, Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir.
Eventually he is joined by Pirelli himself (Bonaventura Bottone),
who I felt with his greater dignity and formality was rather more convincing
(even as a con-man) than his Bridewell
counterpart had been. While I am not very keen on this scene, I felt that
overall it came across much better ROH stage, performed semi-formally by
opera singers who know how to act, than it did when I
saw it performed with complete informality in the round at The Bridewell. All the same I was still thankful when our
two major principals entered. Mrs Lovett does not have a great deal to say in
this scene, she’s mainly there to assist Sweeney, who challenges Pirelli to a
shaving contest, and two men from the ensemble take their seats as the
subjects. Needless to say Sweeney wins the contest, so Pirelli has to give him
five pounds, and The Beadle, who was adjudicating, agrees to come to Sweeney
for a free shave.
Meanwhile back at The Judge’s House, Judge Turpin (Jonathan Veria) is trying to propose marriage to his own ward,
who, needless to say, is shocked by the idea. Jonathan Veria
manages to play his role sympathetically; Although the character is one of the
villains of the piece (one of the two people responsible for both Sweeney’s
wrongful conviction and the abuse of his wife), we can, to some extent feel for
the character, which is no bad thing, because it makes the character that much
more believable to a sophisticated audience. It is a characteristic that is
often present in Sondheim villains, if the performer is willing to bring
that characteristic out. Sondheim pieces, after all, unlike many
fluffier musical comedies, do not present characters in black and white, they are in many shades of grey.
It was somewhere
around at this point, although I can’t quite remember if it was before or after
this scene (though I think it was just after), that The Beggar Woman put in
another appearance, during a scene change (for which one of the curtains had
been pulled across most of the stage), in front of the drapes, she was begging
for “alm’s for a poor woman”, this time
without displacing her legs (I thought the lifting of her skirt was innovative
the first two times, but a third time might have been a bit tedious), from a
child (name unknown, but from the Stage Coach School). This little scene
may be only a very small one, (and one which I do not even remember from The
Bridwell production), but here on the ROH
stage it is powerful, and a great contrast to that scene with the Judge
proposing marriage. For when the child gives The Beggar Woman money, there is a
tender, almost maternal-like, look about her as she thanks the child. Outwardly
she may appear a mad old woman, but that child is not afraid to help her, and
the audience gets a sense that this character would never hurt a child, a good
few others of our principals might.
Back at the Pie Shop, Mrs Lovett is lending Sweeney her Albert’s old
chair, “It will do till you get your nice new one” she tells him. Oh how
well Felicity Palmer acts the part, she is just totally convincing. Thomas
Allen is a fine actor too. Sweeney is keen to get revenge on The Judge, and
The Beadle, but Mrs Lovett persuades him to, Wait. This aria/piece, was the only song which I felt was not entirely
clear, but that could be Sondheim’s writing of it as much as anything
else, and it became quite clear a little later in the act, thanks to Thomas
Allen’s performance. Presently
Anthony drops by to mention his plan to rescue Johanna, and Mrs Lovett suggests
hiding her at the shop. Then Pirelli and Tobias turn up. Tobias stays
downstairs, where Mrs Lovett gives him a pie and Pirelli goes upstairs. He’s
recognised Sweeney, it was he, Benjamin Barker, who trained him as a barber,
and now he’s come to blackmail him. They fight, and when Tobias innocently
wanders upstairs in search of his master, Sweeney shoves Pirelli through a trap
door into a convenient space under the floorboards (to the audience’s right) -
I think in The Bridewell production they used
a large trunk for this sort of thing. Sweeney swiftly sends the boy back down
to Mrs Lovett, to see if she’ll give him a tot of alcohol, which she does,
while Sweeney kills Pirielli.
A scene change brings us almost simultaneously to the outside of The
Judge’s house, where Anthony is singing to Johanna of his plan to steal her
away, Kiss Me, while The Beadle accosts the Judge leaving court
early, and helpfully suggests he should improve his appearance, by a visit to
the barber’s, Ladies In Their Sensitivities. This
little sequence, while coming across rather more effectively than in The Bridwell production (a benefit of having the audience
staying in one place) was still a bit confused by having rather too much
scenery on stage, but one got the general idea.
Back at The Shop, thrifty Mrs Lovett suggests they might as well take
Pirelli’s purse. While Thomas Allen already had some reputation for his
acting abilities, it is becoming increasingly clear that Felicity Palmer
is also jolly good at acting, and indeed might be even better than her leading
man. The action is interrupted by the arrival of another customer for the
shaving business, namely Judge Turpin, as Sweeney prepares to shave him they
sing, Pretty Women, one of those non-communicative duets that Sondheim
is so good at writing. As a matter of fact there are good examples by other
songwriters (such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Twin Soliloquies in
South Pacific; and more recently
The first act has been so good, one might wonder whether the second act
could live up to it’s standard. But when a show is
that good, surely it will be. The first scene finds the pie-shop doing a
roaring business. Benches have now been set out, on which various members of
the chorus are seated. Upstairs Sweeney is still shaving and occasionally
killing his customers. His new chair has just been delivered,
it tilts, so that dead bodies can be sent down a shoot to the bakehouse. Tobias is Mrs Lovett’s assistant, serving the
customers enjoying their pies, God That’s Good. He also has to
keep throwing the old woman out. This scene also provides a magnificent moment
for one other character to really make something of her part, namely The Beggar
Woman. In The Bridewell production this was
the first scene in which the actress playing that role was actually noticed.
However in this production, the excellent Rosalind Plowright
had already established her character, but the scene gives her an opportunity
to ad greater depth to her role, and being rather good at acting that is
exactly what she does; She creates a very mysterious presence, which, if you
don’t know the plot, and even if you do, can’t help but make you feel is in
some way or another going to be our leads undoing. This is one scene, where
even though the leads are on stage, much of our attention is focused away from
them, and quite rightly so, for it adds depth to the plot. (this
was not something so apparent in The Bridwell
production).
In contrast to the jolliaity of The Pie Shop,
the next scene, which takes place with swirling curtains, finds Anthony
searching for his lost love, Johanna, while Sweeney too exacts
his murderous revenge on any strangers sitting in his barber’s chair. And then
slap in the middle of swirling curtains, and searching, who
should run on, a little unexpectedly, but The Beggar Woman, shrieking a bit of City
On Fire. It’s obvious, this character may appear mad, but she’s not as
insane as all that, she clearly realises there’s something not quite right
about that pie-shop, and now she wants to tell everyone else, but of course
she’s just “a half-crazy beggar woman” so no one (except the audience)
takes any notice of her, or even realises she might really know something
(except possibly Mrs Lovett).
Meanwhile in The Shop’s parlour, Mrs Lovett is remarking to Sweeney, on
how well the business is doing, and as they are careful only to kill strangers,
they are not likely to be discovered. Perhaps in a year or two when they’ve
saved up they could retire, she’s always wanted to live By The Sea. This scene was truly amazing. Felicity
Palmer’s performance is an absolute revelation (a revelation on a par with Rosalind
Plowright’s
performance of Nobody Does It Like Me in
Two’s A Crowd). Until now, while Ms Palmer has shown herself, to
be an extremely capable actress, and well able to sing Music Theatre without
venturing into ‘Concert English’ except for those pieces where musically
it is relevant to do so. One is, all be it vaguely, aware, that she is
primarily a classically-trained singer, all be it one with all the skills and
ability necessary to perform this sort of material as it should be performed.
But in this amazing scene she well and truly turns into an actress who can
sing, rather than a singer who can act. To watch this scene you would honestly never
imagine that she is a famous opera singer. You really would think she was a
musical comedy star! And that’s truly not an insult; it’s a complement to both
her acting and her amazing versatility.
Sweeney had not seemed entirely convinced of the proposition in the
previous scene (it is to Thomas Allen’s credit that he managed to make
that clear in his performance, when the audience was so taken up with his
leading lady’s amazing portrayal) In front of the drapes, Sweeney has a
rendezvous with Anthony, I think the audience was still a little stunned by Felicity
Palmer’s amazing performance, with the result that to begin with this scene
did not come across too clearly, but it’s always hard to follow a showstopper.
The creators of many (though not all) of the great 1930’s and 40’s musicals
(especially those that featured mighty leading ladies, like Ethel Merman)
were well aware of that, and they used to structure their musicals in such a
way as to make sure nothing really important was said until the audience had
had time to calm down after a showstopping
performance. However, Sondheim musicals generally aren’t like that,
which can create problems when you have showstopping
performances (the Royal Festival Hall’s revival of Follies,
August 2002, had similar difficulties with Ben’s Folly: Live Laugh And
Love following straight on from a showstopping
tap performance of Phyllis’s Folly: The Story Of Lucy And Jesse).
Anyway back to the plot, it becomes evident that Johanna is hidden in an
asylum, and Sweeney is helping Anthony to pass himself off as a wig maker’s
assistant, so he can go to the asylum to buy hair and once there rescue
Johanna. Then Sweeney sits down and writes, The Letter, to the
Judge, telling him that Anthony has abducted Johanna, and she will be in the
shop that evening.
Back in her parlour, Mrs Lovett is knitting Tobias a muffler. Tobias,
often referred to as Toby, is grateful to Mrs Lovett for treating him so much
more kindly than Pirelli did, however, he feels he should warn her that “Him”,
Sweeney, might be dangerous and cause her harm, but no matter he, Tobias will
protect her, Not While I’m Around. Doug Jones sings this
song with much more presonce than the gentleman who
performed it in The Bridewell production. In
the latter, my main memory of the song is of Jessica Martin’s rendering
of one of the later verses. This time, Doug Jones and Felicity Palmer
are rather more of a match for each other in terms of stage presence. Tobias is
clearly getting suspicious, especially when he realises that Mrs Lovett has
Pirelli’s old purse. But the cunning cook, decides it’s time Tobias came to the
bakehouse to learn how to make pies, and he’s so
thrilled by that he doesn’t notice her locking him in; just as The Beadle turns
up to investigate complaints about bad smoke.
However, he can
take his time about this, for he joins Mrs Lovett in the parlour, for a bit of
singing, Parlour Songs. These are quite beautiful and very much
have the feel of what might be the period in which the piece is set about them.
By now we have come to expect a fine singing and acting performance from Felicity
Palmer, which is of course exactly what we get. But we also get a splendid
and very convincing performance from Paul Arden-Griffiths as The Beadle,
and this really noteworthy, as he was actually a replacement for Robert Tear,
whom the programme has the curtsey to inform us is ill. One should draw
attention to this last point, for it is a matter where this Royal Opera
House production of Sweeney Todd is clearly head and shoulders over many current
Sweeney returns
from his assignation with Anthony, and offers The Beadle a free shave, which is
accepted, and of course Sweeney promptly kills The Beadle and sends him down
the chute. A swift piece of scene changing, shows the
horrified Tobias coming upon The Beadle’s bloody body down in the bakehouse, and making a quick exit to the cellar.
A curtain is drawn
across, and behind the curtain the chorus come on, dressed in their role of the
lunatics in Fogg’s asylum. Presently the curtain is
drawn back. Johanna, is amongst them, only she is shut in a cage, for being in
particular need of correction, so Fogg, well played
by Matthew Rose, is somewhat reluctant to lead the wig-maker to her, but
they have a business agreement after all. On managing to grab Johanna, Anthony
pulls out a gun and shoots Fogg, and they flee. Free
of Fogg, many of the assylum
inmates also flee, singing a reprise of a song we earlier heard The Beggar
Woman shrieking, City On Fire. I
actually preferred this piece when The Beggar Woman did it as a warning, the chorus reprise isn’t as powerful a piece of
theatre.
Now not only are
there lunatics on the loose, but Sweeny and Mrs Lovett are searching for
Tobias, while The Beggar Woman is searching the beading, Searching.
This is a piece that could be confusing, but isn’t so very confusing, mainly
because, Thomas Allen, Felicity Palmer and Rosalind Plowright are all excellent actors; the kind of actors
who have a lot of presence but at the same time can be clear and concise in
their performances. So you’re going to pay them attention, and follow the plot
easily.
Presently Anthony and Johanna reach the deserted shop, where Anthony
leaves Johanna to get a conveyance. Someone is approaching, it’s The Beggar
Woman. A frightened Johanna hides. Ironically she is the only person who
actually seems frightened by The Beggar Woman (Mrs Lovett doesn’t like her,
while Sweeney only saw her once and ignored her). Now it’s Rosalind Plowright’s big
moment. If it had not already been apparent before, she knows this room, and as
her memory is stirred she sings, The Beggar Woman’s Lullabye.
For someone with such a powerful heavy Mezzo voice, Rosalind Plowright can actually sing quite tenderly. It is here
too that her work in establishing her character to
clearly from the start pays off. Instead of having to figure out who this odd
character is now, the audience is instead free to pay attention to the plot,
and where she fits into it. The irony of her presence in the
room, singing the lyric “My Jo My Jing” just
when a scared Johanna is hiding in that same room, is not lost.
Presently Sweeney returns, maybe at last he might uncover her mystery.
But there is no
time, the Judge is about to enter, at long last Sweeney Todd will have his
revenge. He has to get rid of The Beggar Woman quickly, so he kills her, and
sends her down the chute into the bake house. It’s nice to see how game some of
the biggish names in this production are about getting into their parts. And
now, having had a big scene from an important feature player, now it’s The Leading Man’s big moment. The Judge takes the hot
seat (so to speak), and Sweeney swiftly seizes the opportunity to exact his
revenge by killing the judge, and tipping him down the chute. Just before he’s
killed the Judge recognises him. Thomas Allen acts the scene with relish, it is a testimony to his acting skills that he is so
convincing. Having finally done the deed he has been trying to do all along, he
is about to exit, but doesn’t. This nearly exit, gives Johanna the opportunity
to emerge from her hiding place. And here too is another of the plot’s great
ironic moments. Sweeney realising she has just witnessed the killing now
decides he will have to silence her, by killing her, his own daughter, too,
though she promises she won’t say anything if he lets her go.
Fortunately for
Johanna, fate intervenes. We hear a scream, which is pretty recognisably Felicity
Palmer, and Sweeny hurries to investigate. A swift scene change, finds us
down in the bake house, with three bodies lying on the stage (two of them are
dead and one nearly so), they are of course The Beadle, The Beggar Woman, and,
The Judge. The latter trying to grab Mrs Lovett’s leg, the other two are
perfectly still. Presently The Judge too lies still, dead at last, just as
Sweeney enters. And now it’s The Leading Lady’s turn to demonstrate her acting
skills with a fine performance, with Felicity Palmer acting the role, it
is a fine performance, as Mrs Lovett tries in vain to stop Sweeney going to The
Beggar Woman’s body. She’s always tried to keep them apart, but this time
Sweeney seems compelled to look at her. It may be a testimony to the
performances of both Thomas Allen and Felicity
Palmer, as well as Rosalind Plowright’s wonderful characterisation
earlier in the evening, that this moment is in many ways more powerful than it
had been in The Bridwell production. Then it
had been a twist, here it is more a dénouement, as Sweeney Todd/Benjamin Barker
at last realises The Beggar Woman was none other than his wife Lucy. Mrs Lovett
attempts to defend herself, she never told him Lucy
had actually died, only that she swallowed poison. And would Sweeney really be
able to love someone in the state she ended up in?
Well as far a
Sweeney Todd is concerned, yes he would. Mrs Lovett’s very convincing protests,
which Felicity Palmer acts at least as well as Jessica Martin did
in The Bridewell production, are to no avail,
as Sweeney shoves her into her own oven. After two such major moments, and the
last really was dramatic, it’s hard to keep up the pace, which is perhaps why
it’s a little difficult to follow the action that follows, as Tobias emerges
from the cellar, goes mad and kills the barber (presumably as revenge for
murdering Mrs Lovett, and Pirelli), or does he kill the barber and then go mad?
It is this scene of
carnage and madness into which Anthony and Johanna, followed by The Chorus
enter. Presently, and by now the audience has come back down to earth enough to
pay attention, they begin to sing, The Ballad Of
Sweeney Todd. It starts with the chorus, but very very
quickly they are joined by a few of the feature players, Pirelli, The Beggar
Woman (for once standing straight and tall with the hood of her cloak down, so
we can actually see her face), and then a little later, The Beadle, and The
Judge. And finally The Leads join the rest of the company on stage as the show
ends.
This performance was not merely a production of a notable piece of music
theatre, it was not merely operatic singers singing a
piece by one of the major Broadway composers. It was quite simply an occasion.
All to often commercial
Firstly, the
Musical Direction, is in the hands of a true master, Paul
Gemignani has conducted many Sondheim musicals,
and several of those, including Sweeney Todd, for their original
Broadway productions. Many of the singers are, internationally acclaimed on the
operatic stage, so they are masters of their craft, but what really is amazing
is how well so many of them can sing without the slightest hint of their
magnificent operatic tones, in the places where the piece requires it. One of
the interesting things about Sweeney Todd is what a borderline
piece it is. Parts of it really do benefit from being sung with a real operatic
voice, but there are also places where that would be wholly inappropriate. So
it’s marvellous to see the work performed by singers who can do whatever is
required of their voices at a given moment in the show. Sometimes being all
operatic, and at other times being anything but.
One singer who
particularly stands out, and got criticised in some reviews, for not using her
operatic voice, very much, is Rosalind Plowright.
Yes it is true that she played this role relying much more on her acting skills
than singing. But (as she herself mentioned in an interview on Woman’s
Hour) The Composer’s own instructions to her were to shriek rather than
sing her part in places. She is following direction. Admittedly it may come as
something of a surprise to find someone who is known as a major operatic singer
(whether it be as a soprano or mezzo-soprano) performing a role on the Royal
Opera House’s stage as more acting than singing. But if a performer is
actually capable of performing in a way that is not what their audience are
used to expecting from them, why shouldn’t they make use of an opportunity to
demonstrate their versatility? There have been many examples of such things in
the world of Music Theatre in general, for example: In the original production
of Follies, when the original conductor left he was replaced on
the podium by the drummer (who incidentally has been conducting, and conducting
Sondheim, ever since). More recently (Summer 2002 at the Royal
Festival Hall) a notable British TV puppeteer (well-known to those who
known about TV puppetry) turned up tap-dancing (very well) in a revival of Follies.
If you can have a Broadway drummer conducting or a puppeteer tap-dancing, then
why shouldn’t an opera singer act and shriek her part, as opposed to singing
it, at least if she happens to be as good at acting as Rosalind Plowright is.
Acting is one of
the key features of this production. All the singers prove themselves to be
fine actors. Thomas Allen is quite simply excellent; a lot better, in
fact that quite a number of men I’ve seen play leads in stage musicals.
William Dazeley and Rebecca Evans
successfully combine (in their case) a lot of quite operatic singing, with
clear acting, switching between singing and acting cleanly, at just the right
moments. But the real revelation of the
evening is the wonderful Felicity Palmer. If you know anything much
about Thomas Allen, William Dazeley,
and Rosalind Plowright’s
previous work, it might not come as too much of a surprise to find how well
they can act. But Felicity Palmer wow! What a leading lady! It is rather
unusual to find such an effective lead. In the world of Music Theatre, I can
only think of three previous instances where I have been quite so hit-between-the-eyes
by the brilliance of a leading lady, whom I hadn’t seen on stage before. Yes,
as Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Felicity Palmer is up there
with the best of them, she’s definitely the kind of opera singer one wants to
hear perform this kind of borderline Music Theatre/Light Opera work.
She’s every bit as good at acting as her fellow performers, and very
convincing. Although she has a fine operatic voice, (like several of her
co-stars) she doesn’t have to use it. At times she can sing without any trace
of ‘concert-English’. And then she can speak in accent. Not only does
she speak well in a cockney accent, she also sings well in it (much better than
Josephine Barstow did on a recording of Oliver or Kiri Te Kanawa on My
Fair Lady - although the latter was a case of full marks for trying). Over
the years, there have been several occasions when opera singers have attempted
cross-over, with varying degrees of success. Generally it has been the
Americans who’ve lead the way, singers such as: Jerry Hadley, Thomas Hampson, Dawn Upshaw, and, Frederica Von Stade, have all made some marvellous recordings (I
particularly like Hampson’s Frank Butler in Annie
Get Your Gun, and Von Stade’s Magnolia in Showboat
and Hope Hancourt in Anything Goes). But
elsewhere in the world, while there have been attempts, sometimes the quality
of performance (especially from the women, one example being the female lead on
the EMI Classics Kiss Me Kate), has been put of a
lot musical theatre enthusiasts off the very idea of opera singers attempting
lighter work. But here in the Royal Opera House all that has been vanquished.
It is British opera singers (and one Irishman) leading the way. Between them
wonderful Felicity Palmer (here in Sweeney Todd) and
versatile Rosalind Plowright (Sweeney Todd
and Two’s A Crowd) demonstrate that British female opera singers
are every bit as good as the best of their American counterparts at handling
this sort of Music Theatre material. (Indeed Palmer almost certainly does the
cockney accent for her particular character rather better than some Broadway
actresses could do it). Sometimes in stage musicals you can have wonderful
leading ladies, and then weak male leads who don’t quite come up to the
standard set, but with Thomas Allen as Sweeney Todd, we have a leading
man who is most certainly more than up to standard. Indeed it is it’s high standards that make this production stand out. It
may be nearly twice as expensive as top prices in the West End, but
unlike long running West End musicals (as Paul Arden-Griffith’s
performance of The Beadle illustrated) it is of a consistently high standard of
performance from the entire company, from the biggest leads to the smallest
chorus roles, everybody is superb, and gives the audience it’s money’s worth.