Sweeney Todd review, Sondheim’s demon barber is still a cut above

Birmingham Rep With tremendous singing from Ramin Karimloo and Meow Meow, Joe Murphy’s superb staging of the story is full of dark gothic humour

S tephen Sondheim was drawn to fairytales, and not just in the storybook theme of Into the Woods . The origins of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, lie in Victorian melodrama, but in the hands of the composer, working with book writer Hugh Wheeler in response to a play by Christopher Bond, it is steeped in the tropes of folklore.

The story of a serial killer who provides the grisly contents for his landlady’s pies is ripe with the kind of dark gothic humour that appealed to the Brothers Grimm. There are shades of Hansel and Gretel in the cavernous oven and of Little Red Riding Hood in the prospect of being turned into someone’s dinner. The composer’s lyrics even quote the nursery rhyme Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake, Baker’s Man.

Sensing the archetypal seriousness of all this, director Joe Murphy gives Sweeney Todd the full operatic treatment. His superb staging is as rich in detail as it is austere in execution. The chorus set the tone, singing directly to the audience, fixed in position like ghostly statues, the more so under the icy lighting design by Rory Beaton.

They are as still as the figure of Lady Justice that dominates Elin Steele’s concrete-grey set, the scales of the law tipped in favour of a self-serving legal system and away from the vengeful Todd, who has been transported to Australia by a corrupt and rapacious judge. This is a London rendered in grimy monochrome, where the period costumes in pastel shades of mustard, lime and peach stand out in defiance of the poverty around them.

Seriousness of purpose, however, does not make it heavy going, even if Sondheim provided a couple of songs too many. Yes, an excellent Ramin Karimloo never cracks a smile in the title role, but that only gives the blade-wielding barber a nobility that belies his actions. His chilling surface calm suggests all his efforts are going into suppressing a murderous rage.

Offsetting such fury is Meow Meow as landlady Mrs Lovett, a witty study in venality and opportunism. That she has a cartoonish swagger is not to underestimate her singing which, as it is for the whole cast, is tremendous throughout.