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The demon barber of Fleet Street is back in town, and those of a nervous disposition are advised to sit well away from the front stalls at the Festival Hall. There will be few sights in the West End this summer more terrifying than that of Bryn Terfel leaping into the audience, gleefully searching for his next hapless customer – his face locked in a psychotic leer, his voice like thunder, his razor slashing like a scythe.
The Southbank Centre’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s dark, satanic melodrama is billed as semi-staged. The text has been given what Sweeney himself might call a neat trim (losing the Judge’s nasty anthem to self-flagellation is no hardship). There is no scenery, costumes or even the usual spurts of ketchup as Sweeney’s razor embarks on its enthusiastic orgy of serial revenge. Presumably the Southbank management did not want splodges on its pristine new platform.
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Round them are suitably grotesque cameos, notably Philip Quast’s smarmy Judge, Steve Elias’s creepy Beadle, Adrian Thompson as the caricature Italian barber Pirelli, Rosemary Ashe as the crazed Beggar Woman, who is more than she seems, and Daniel Evans as the simpleton Tobias, who finally dispatches Sweeney with his own razor. Emma Williams gives a nicely frenetic performance as the repressed Johanna, though she sometimes raced ahead of the beat; and Daniel Boys is an appealing Anthony.
© Times Newspapers Ltd.
