|
|
by C. G. Bond Directed by Stephen Kimsey
February 10, 11 & 12, 1994
| Anthony Hope |
Mark Kimsey |
| Sweeney Todd |
Malcolm Bentote |
| A Beggar Woman |
Dorothy Bentote |
| Mrs Lovett |
Estelle Dunham |
| A Beadle |
Derek Allcock |
| Judge Turpin |
Brian Beeston |
| Tobias Ragg |
David Higgs |
| A Balding Man |
Stephen Kimsey |
| Alredo Pirelli |
Tag |
| Johanna |
Emma Kimsey |
| Jonas Fog |
Richard Holt |
| The Watch |
Arthur Plummer |
Programme Notes
[ Photographs]
[Printed Programme]
There have been at least six versions of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
since George Dibdin-Pitt's original melodrama was first performed at The Brittania in
1847. However, Pitt's play was not entirely original. It was based on a penny dreadful,
a newsheet containing sensational descriptions of depravity, violence and grotesque
murder. Where a penny dreadful obtained its 'facts' nobody knows, although there
was a Jacobin barber in Paris during the French Revolution who achieved the d'fficult feat
(under the circumstances) of shocking the public by committing a series of bizarre
murders. However, there the similarity stops; no trick chair and no Mrs Lovett's meat
pies.
Melodrama is always written to provide audiences with thrills, hor ror and shock.
However, in recent years, the endless stream of horror films have explored every means of
doing this, with far greater realism and impact that can ever be achieved on stage. The
Theatre's answer to this was to present plays with the cast hamming the passion and
sending up the romance. Snarling, leering villains and behind-the-hand asides merely
resulted, in most cases, with superficial and crudely constructed plays about
one-dimensional characters.
C. G. Bond's Sweeney Todd has characters that are large but real and situations that,
given a mad world like are own, are believable. Having borrowed characters from amongst
others, The Count of Monte Christo, The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare,
Bond has achieved a melodrama far from the Theatre's original answer. In this version,
Todd has some grounds for his nefarious activities, in that his wife was abducted and
raped by the same Judge who deports him for a crime he has not committed. He returns to
England to avenge his family accompa nied by Anthony, who has saved his life. Anthony
falls in love with the Judge's ward while Todd sets up with Mrs Lovett and provides her
with fillings for her pies. He proceeds with his vengeful plans, but the outcome is
bitterly ironic. |
