I saw this last week, and it was AMAZING. Absolutely incredible, and cannot imagine a better production. I'll be honest; I didn't even notice it had been updated to the 1930's!

Imelda Staunton is phenomenal. She's probably the best Mrs. Lovett I've ever seen. She's hilarious and then really pulls on your heartstrings in "By the Sea" and at the end.

Michael Ball is solid, but I'm not sure he matches Imelda. He has a good voice, and he was definitely able to capture the dark side of Sweeney. I liked him overall, but if this production transfers to Broadway, I wouldn't be too bothered if he didn't go with it.

But definitely book your tickets for Sweeney Todd if you haven't already!

http://www.sweeneytodd.co.uk/

I pretty much agree with all of that. ^

Imelda Staunton is simply incredible. She gets laughs in places I'd never heard a laugh before and her By the Sea is hilarious and then suddenly devastating. Another highlight was her reaction to Nothing's Gonna Harm You - I teared up and got goosebumps. I felt for her Lovett in a way I never have before. Right from Wait her absolute devotion to Sweeney was so clear and genuine. I'm uncomfortable with Sondheim's (pretty sure it's him) labeling of her as the true villain of the piece, as I don't feel that at all. She does wicked things but never for purely wicked reasons, as Sweeney does. She is motivated by love (and pragmatism) and he revenge. I don't see how she is so much worse than he is, aside admittedly from her manipulation of him.

Michael Ball was fine; given that it's far from the kind of role he would usually play, it's an impressive performance with some nice moments (particular Epiphany). Nevertheless he didn't take me as Staunton did (but then no Sweeney has ever outshone Lovett for me).

I didn't care for either Luke Brady or Lucy May Barker. His performance in act one was done with a CONSTANT smile and weak singing, she was bland and had a very (I suppose appropriately) birdlike trilling vibrato that bothered me.

The chorus was uniformly excellent and the production as a whole looked and sounded great. There were a couple of things I would have changed, like the staging of Mrs. Lovett's end and the Johanna quartet, but overall it was wonderful.

A healthy 4 stars.

I don't agree with you. Sweeney doesn't do anything of wiked reasons. Everything ill he does is because he's mind has craked and he's desperate after fifteen unjust years in prison because the judge wanted to rape his wife.

The pragmatism and manipulation is Lovett's villainy. She's completely void of empathy, she's only pragmatic. even her love for Sweeney doesn't make her tell him his wife is still alive, she only wants him, regardless of he may wish himself. If it is love, it is a purely selfish sort of love.

Lovett has no concern for anyone but herself, not even the one she "loves", Sweeney has only concern for his wife and his daughter, no matter what happens to himself.

That's quite interesting, but I don't think you can explain away everything Sweeney does by saying that he's mad. When the Judge escapes him in act one, he decides he'll just have to kill everyone - "we all deserve to die". This is cold, indiscriminate hatred for society in general. He does not act for the benefit of Johanna: he uses her to lure in the judge, nothing more. After he has his epiphany, it is no longer about getting Johanna back, it is purely about killing Turpin. Lovett does not encourage him to do this, she simply thinks of an efficient way of cleaning up. She isn't one of Macbeth's witches, she does nothing to set his killing in motion.

I suppose you could argue that they are both driven by obsession - Sweeney with revenge and Lovett with Sweeney. While he had "fifteen unjust years in prison" she had fifteen years waiting and hoping that the man she loved might one day come back. When he does come back, she does everything she can to keep him. I disagree with you that she has no concern for him. She wants him to stop the killing (By the Sea); she says she only "lied" about Lucy because she didn't think Sweeney could bear to see her as the Beggar Woman (though of course this may not be true); she gives up Toby for him. She has to choose between Toby and Sweeney and she chooses Sweeney.

They're both blinkered and fixated, but I find it very hard to accept that she is 'worse' than he is.

Interestingly, Angela Lansbury has described Mrs. Lovett simply as 'comic relief'. I feel that does not do the character justice.

The Epiphany is explicitly Sweeney's mental breakdown. Like Rose's Turn is Rose's mental breakdown, Live Laugh Love is Ben's mental breakdown, etc. "We all deserve to die" is his mind cracking.



How does she want him to stop the killing in By the sea? She even suggests he now and then can do the guest in! It's the punch line of the song!



I think it's an obvious lie.

She wanted Sweeney, and it was convenient that his wife has gone mad. Letting him know Lucy still lived would have stopped at least the killing of the innocent people. And Lovett is aware of that, but stopping the killing would ruin the meat source for her now successful pie shop. I don't think one can get much more evil than that.

But even if that's true, why should that somehow get him off the hook? I don't think he's going insane, he just snaps. He has a moment of madness where he decides to kill everyone and then quite sanely and systematically sets about doing it. He knows what he's doing just as much as Mrs. Lovett does.


She wants to take him away from the barber shop to a more normal life. I see her offer of the odd victim is trying to entice him - he is quite enjoying the current set up and she's saying, 'Well you can still kill the occasional person if you really need to,' but on nothing like the scale of the pie shop.


If that's the case, then I would say this is the centre of Lovett's wickedness. If her sole reason for keeping Lucy from Sweeney was to keep Sweeney for herself then you're right (but I don't think this makes her 'the villain of the piece'). Nonetheless, I think it absolutely fits in with her blind love for him that she would invent a reason to keep the couple apart and start to believe it herself.

She has been using Toby like she uses anyone else, and when he starts to be a threat, she sacrifices him without blinking an eye. I don't understand how this underlines that she cares for Sweeney rather than wanting him regardless of anything.



I don't know the difference, I'm afraid. But the song was explicitly written as the mental breakdown of the character, so no matter how systematically he works afterwards, he has gone mad.



I think this is an incorrect interpretation of the situation. Lovett doesn't care about the killing - she wants it to continue, so she can make money on the pies. It's not the "normality" of the life by the sea that attracts her - it's only a typically sentimental dream of hers to live by the sea. That's part of what makes her a villain: she is very concerned about cozy details in housekeeping and such, flowers and wall paper, while she regards murder a detail.

Oh I definitely disagree with that. I absolutely think she develops genuine affection for Toby - she describes herself as the most maternal person you could meet and goes on to demonstrate this by taking in this poor scrap of a thing and looking after him. Also (and I suppose this is in performance rather than necessarily in the text) she is obviously heart-broken when she realises what she has to do. That's what makes the moment she locks him in the bakehouse so effective; she is absolutely torn in two. I don't think she makes the decision lightly - but when she puts things in the balance, she finds that her love for Sweeney is greater than her love for Toby.



But again, does that somehow mitigate what he does?



I guess we'll have to disagree on this one. I think that living by the sea is a dream she had ever since she was a child and her Aunt Nettie took her on holidays - that song is the moment we get to see past the dry pragmatism to what she really, truly wants.

I'd never thought of it that way, that she regards murder as a detail. That's really interesting. OK, but why does that make her a villain? Does it make a difference that for her, murder is a means whereas for Sweeney it's an end? It was never her idea, but the fact of the matter is that it's happening, so she's adapted. How can her acquiescence to someone else's killing be worse than killing?

I guess it hinges on considering Sweeney truly unhinged, to an extent that makes him not wholly responsible for what he does. I see him as competent enough to be responsible and so can't excuse him.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for unrequited love. That's more likely.

I think that are more lies, and it's part of the irony. Like her affection for wall paper, flowers and sea life, her affection for Toby is completely false. I don't remeber how Lansbury and LuPone played the scenes with Toby, but I found the movie version very disappointing because HBC lacks this subtext.



Yes, because he's not evil, as Lovett is. There's an acceptable explanation for what he does (not an excuse, though). He's been treated extremely badly, and has lost his mind. What he does isn't for his own benefit. It's the result of something outside him.



Regarding murder a detail makes her a villain because it demonstrates her total lack of empathy. Sweeney's murders is something he does because he has been driven to desperation. Lovett doesn't really need to kill, she just think it's acceptable to do it since she benefits from it. If it happened that something else that by coincidence did not hurt anybody would have benefitted her more, she'd have done that. What makes her a villain is that she doesn't discriminate between things that hurt others or not, if it benefits her. That makes her perfectly amoral, and her amorality is the core of the piece's theme.

The theme is more subtle than evil vs not evil. It's about the reasons for why one acts evil. Sweeney, after having lost his mind, chooses evil, because he can tell it apart from good. Lovett just is evil, because she has no concern for anyone but herself. The difference between good or evil is irrelevant to her. That is true evil, imo.

But as you say, it's more subtle than just 'evil' or 'not evil'. I absolutely refuse to say there is an 'acceptable explanation'. Bear in mind the point at which his epiphany comes - it's when he loses the judge. He isn't driven mad by his years in exile or the rape of his wife, it's the moment when his revenge is taken away from him. His anger is so great that he decides to murder the world.


Again, I disagree with your take on Lovett's rationale. I don't think she actively thinks that the killings are OK. She loves Sweeney; a predilection for throat slicing is a fault that Sweeney has; therefore she will just have to get on board with it.


I don't think there's any evidence for that at all. It's not that Sweeney doesn't know what he's doing is wrong, he just doesn't care. Is that not as bad as Lovett's supposed apathy?
And again, we fundamentally disagree on how selfish she is. You think she acts only in her own interest; I think she acts entirely in Sweeney's interest (and I think killing Toby is evidence of this). I just think it becomes an incredibly dull role if there is no tension within the character at all, no conflict. If she doesn't care about anything or anyone but herself, the audience would not empathise with her as I believe it does every night.

I absolutely refuse to say there is an 'acceptable explanation'. Bear in mind the point at which his epiphany comes - it's when he loses the judge. He isn't driven mad by his years in exile or the rape of his wife, it's the moment when his revenge is taken away from him.[/quote]

But it is the rape of his wife, his exile, the belief that his wife is dead and the knowledge that his daughter is taken into custody of the very same man that raped his wife, sent him into exile, and as far as he knows drove his wife to suicide that leads to the want of revenge. That is much more acceptable as an explanation of his state of mind, than that the singular incident losing the judge is.

I think you are misinterpreting what I'm writing. Lovett is by no means apathetic. She is gleefully and naïvely happy that Sweeney is back and that her shop runs well. That is because she is totally amoral, as opposed to immoral. And amorality is a much scarier phenomenon than immorality.

Sweeney, and in fact most of the other characters in the play, are immoral or do immoral acts. Lovett is completely unpredictable, because anything but her own wellbeing is irrelevant to her. If she loves Sweeney, she uses any means to get him, regardless of his feelings, as the song Wait demonatrates. He is not concerned about Lovett at all, until she helps him disposing the victims of his revenge. And she is unable to understand that he doesn't care about her, because other people's (including Sweeney's) are irrelevant to her.

Sweeney and the other characters are corrupted in some or other way, yet they are able to differ between good and evil. As Lovett is amoral, she lacks this ability, which both provides conflict in the character (one can never predict what she's going to do, pick some flowers or make mince meat of her kitchen boy), and is much more scary. Also it is more fun.

Of course does she think the killings are ok. It wasn't she who initiated it, but it doesn't affect her the slightest, and when Daniel O'Higgins is killed, she is the one who pushes it further - not because she has any ethic justification for killing people who have deliberately injured Sweeney, but because it gives her a source for meat. Which is a perfectly pragmatic and amoral and unconcerned reason for committing awful crimes.

Do you mind if I ask you if you base your interpretation on the movie or the stage show? Because much of your interpretations seems like they're based on the movie, which in my opinion misinterpreted (deliberately or not) many aspects of the show, and the result was in many ways shallower and disappointing.

All those things you've listed justify revenge on the judge only. They do not 'explain' his serial killing except as his way of 'getting back at the world' .I don't think what he's gone through makes him less morally culpable for what he does.


I agree with those facts but not the feelings behind them. Sweeney doesn't care about her, and she can't accept this because if it's true, it's the end of her world. She out and out asks him, "You do love me, don't you?" She absolutely needs to be certain of his love in order to carry on doing what she's doing. I don't know how you can say his feelings are irrelevant to her - it's like saying that Ben's feelings are irrelevant to Sally. They are her everything and if she allowed herself to think even for a second that those feelings were not reciprocated, the ground would come out from under her feet. In Lovett's case I don't see this as selfishness, it's love taken to obsession. She loves him so much that she will do anything for him, even (indirectly) kill for him - this is no more than what Anthony does for Johanna.


I don't think she is amoral, I just think her moral compass is guided by what she sees as the best interests of her and Sweeney's union. I think that makes everything she does explicable and grounded. I disagree that it's "more fun" to have a character act randomly and unpredictably - if there are no discernible motivations and desires driving the action, then there's nothing to engage with.


How does she push it further? It's Sweeney's idea to keep killing people, and it's her idea to put them in pies afterwards. She never says, "we need meat, so kill more people please." It's Sweeney's decision to kill and she picks up the pieces in the most efficient way. I'm not saying she's blameless or doing a good thing by being an accomplice, of course not. What I'm saying is that her going along with it for Sweeney's sake is comprehensible for reasons outside of amorality. I think the perfect proof for this is when she finds the first body: she is horrified and repulsed by what Sweeney did, she can't understand it. Then he explains that Pirelli was trying to blackmail him, and for Lovett, that's justification enough - this man was trying to harm Sweeney, so Sweeney got rid of him. The murder was awful, but it had to be done for Sweeney's benefit. That is how she judges the acceptability of behaviour.


Stage show - haven't seen the film for years and I saw the stage show again yesterday so it's freshest in my mind. That and cast recordings obviously.