Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
From an adaptation by Christopher Bond
Originally directed by Harold Prince
Original orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick
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After 15 years of wrongful imprisonment, barber Sweeney Todd returns to London in search of his wife and daughter. He loses his mind when pie-shop owner Mrs Lovett reveals their respective murder and mistreatment at the hands of a sinister Judge. His grizzly quest for revenge leads to a heartbreaking discovery.
Sweeney Todd fills a void with a bloody and blind quest for vengeance. Those who enter his shop get more than a close shave. The unlucky ones ending up in Mrs Lovett’s rather unsavoury pies, proving you are what you eat.
Sondheim’s masterpiece is by turns hugely funny, terrifying and deeply sad. It works on a number of different levels, is complex but always engaging. In a scene of high comedy, Mrs Lovett explains why hers are ‘The worst pies in London’. In another, Sweeney is reunited with the razor blades he left behind when he was wrongfully imprisoned. There are few scenes like it. On one hand it is disturbing – he regards the razors as his friends and begins to be distanced from the real world – but it is also strangely moving. The musical’s finale is devastating but also hugely cathartic.
An amateur production presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International (Europe)
All authorised performance materials are also supplied by MTI Europe www.MTIShows.co.uk
