Writer: George Dibden Pitt
Adaptor and Director: Jeff Clarke
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, for it may not be quite as expected.
Wilton’s Music Hall is a perfectly atmospheric place to hold Opera Della Luna’s Sweeney Todd – The Victorian Melodrama, which uses a script by George Dibdin Pitt from 1847. The original title of both play and penny-dreadful was The String of Pearls and tells the story of a sailor, who, landing in London under an assumed name, wishes to deliver a priceless pearl necklace to Johanna, the woman he loves. Unfortunately, he decides to tidy himself up before this longed-for meeting and uses the services of Fleet Street barber, Sweeney Todd.
Sweeney Todd is not the tragic figure of the Sondheim musical. He has no desire for revenge and is motivated by nothing more than greed and the thrill of getting away with murder. Nick Dwyer performs the character chin-first, thrusting it out ahead of him wherever he goes. As the play enters its later stages, the audience are encouraged to boo him, prompting Dwyer to push his chin out further and swagger with more braggadocio.
His most dogged opponent is Cecily Maybush, Johanna’s maidservant, played by Lynsey Docherty in a voice that sounds uncannily like Catherine Tate’s. She risks, and outwits the gormless street bullies, she explores the dark chambers of Sweeney’s shop and she pulls out a pair of scissors ready to duel to the death. As well as Sweeney, she has another antagonist in Reverend Lupin.
Lupin is a hypocritical Methodist preacher who has Johanna’s mother enthralled. This family drama provides a subplot to the main murderous barber narrative. Paul Featherstone gives him a creepy, oily loathsomeness that makes him more dislikable than the title villain. He crawls and grovels in ways that look lascivious and sweaty and a duet between him and Cecily is one of the comic highlights in a play that has as many laughs as it does shocks.
Victorian melodrama may conjure up images of pastiche, with a moustache-twirling villain tying a struggling lady to railway tracks but Sweeney Todd – The Victorian Melodrama doesn’t feel like that. While the performances are exaggerated and victims cry out lines like, “Villain, you murder me!”, the style of performance feels more like a silent film, heightened but not hammy. Although, as the actions in the play escalate and the audience settles into its tone, feeling free to boo and cheer, the performances get bigger and it edges closer into camp territory. The wrap up at the end, when all the characters (many played by the same actors) come off and on stage to deliver their asides to the audience, comes very close to farce.
One of the most interesting elements of melodrama used in Sweeney Todd, is the use of music. While scores for the original play have not survived, Opera Della Luna have made use of a number of scores from other contemporary productions. Madeleine Robinson’s Johanna shows off tremendous power and control, and Matthew Siveter performs a grimly funny song about the deliciousness of Lovett’s pies.
However, most of the music is instrumental. Much of the time, the music works like a film score, underlining emotion and building tension but sometimes it almost acts as a character in the play, interspersing lines of dialogue with lines of melody, a technique from the time called ‘speaking through music’. The instruments also provide sound effects, with one violin, in particular, being used for a huge number of squeaking doors. The play was written 100 years before the invention of WD40 after all.
An interesting factor in performing an older version of the Sweeney Todd story is the issue with the pies. For many, the ultimate culinary fate of his victims is the only part of the story they know but in the original book, and this production, it’s a twist – a horrific little glaze on top. This also means that Mrs Lovett is not a major character in the story. Instead, much of the play deals with Sweeney’s attempts to cover his tracks and the drama within the Oakley family. The play also contrives a very different (and less convincing) ending than both the book and later adaptations of the story.
Where Sweeney Todd – A Victorian Melodrama succeeds, is playing an outmoded and neglected form of theatre straight, but with enough tweaks to pull a modern audience on board. It makes a good case for its own performance and hopefully inspires more Victorian melodramas to return to the stage in the future.
Runs until 29 April 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
A bloody good time
