I’m just back –
exhausted – from Magdeburg. Yes, I didn’t know where it was either. But I do
now, and I’ve had a nice time. Enjoyable red-train trip, excellent comfy Ratswaage
hotel, delicious dinner at the Lago di Garda … but I didn’t go there for those
things. I went because I’d been invited to the Opernhaus’s production of Sweeney Todd.
Yes. Well, Sweeney and I go back a long way. To the
first week of its official life on Broadway, actually. And I’ve seen it in all
shapes and sizes since. With very varying degrees of enjoyment.
The original, I
didn’t find attractive. The piece was smothered in ‘meaningful production’ (oh
that awful organ!) and – well, I wasn’t quite sure whether we were supposed to
be taking this for real, or whether it was a good old Tod-Slaughteresque
burlesque. Mrs Lovett and the juves seemed to be playing the second, and Todd
and the chorus the first. No, I said to my boss, don’t buy this one. London
knows its String of Pearls, we’ve had
Sweeney Todd musicals before, and
this fancy lot don’t seem to know what they’re trying to do.
But I was to, sort
of, eventually, change my mind. Some time later, after the egregious flop of
the ‘big’ show at Drury Lane, I went to the little Half Moon theatre and saw a
cut down (if heavily left-slanted) version with Leon Greene as a hugely
charismatic and gloriously vocal Sweeney. Small was good. Yes! Cut, pruned …
cast well … I’ve no remembrance of who played the other roles. This version was all
about Benjamin Barker.
I next saw an
excellent production at Northampton Opera House with Michael Heath and Susan
Jane Tanner … yes, this time, like the first, I remembered Mrs Lovett ..
Since, I’ve not
seen one production to equal those two. But I remember my feeling on the
original: I came out liking Mrs Lovett, Toby, the ensemble and chorus music and
…
But on to
Magdeburg. Lovely little Opernhaus (with an inattentive barman!), grand seats,
fine orchestra, and an opera company. Hmm. I was a little worried. Opera? Well,
yes, the music needs singing. But much of the piece is burlesque. We don’t want
a po-faced opera performance. So what did we get …?
I don’t quite know
where to start. So, why not start with the good and the fine things.
The scenic concept
was grand. I loved Anthony and Sweeney coming ashore on a real ship. There were
many pictures of past productions in it, which all worked adequately, but alas there
was one horrendous failure, to which I will come later.
The highlights of
the night, for me, were two performances. The same as on my original experience
of the show: Mrs Lovett and Toby.
I have seen
Australian Gaye MacFarlane before. In Sydney, when (as casting director of the
London show) I saw her play the best ever Chairy Barnum (opposite the worst
ever Barnum) in the musical of that name. Never did I think to find her in
Magdeburg 30 years later!
Well, it was a
‘bonzer’ revisitation. She is even more dazzling as Mrs Lovett than as Mrs
Barnum. And, in this production, that is
a hard job. It’s implacably operatic. Under a direction which, as so often with
this piece, doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind whether to be
melodrama, burlesque, comedy or a mixture of all, she encompasses the whole
field. She is pretty and coquettish enough to make her flirtation with Todd
seem real rather than grotesque, her duets with him were vocally outstanding,
and oh! the highlight of the show: her ‘No one’s going to harm you’ with Toby.
That wasn’t any kind of burlesque. But it slayed the house. This was a
performance of choice. I think, perhaps, sorry Angela and Sue Jane, the best
Mrs Lovett of my career.
Then Toby. Michael
Ernst. A grateful role, but one full of
traps. He started a bit coarsely and finished ott (director’s and dramaurg’s fault),
but his ‘No one’s going to harm you’ was quite, quite superb. Although I’m not
sure why he was still wearing his Act One wig. But, anyway, that was my moment
of the night.
Then, of course,
Sweeney. Well, Cariou was masculine, and not vocally impressive, but he did
dominate the show with his presence. Hearn was and did more so in both ways.
Greene utterly outdid both, in triplicate. Powerful, looming, ‘this man is
dangerous’. And with a huge ex-English Opera voice.
Tonight we had
Kevin Tarte. Not of the operatic company but, like Ms Macfarlane and Mr Ernst,
a guest. Mr Tarte has a really splendid baritone voice which he uses to great
effect, he acts with enthusiasm and intelligence ... OK, so, what am I holding back on?
How one department
can ruin a performance and a show.
Mr Tarte was
dressed and wigged ... no, I forbid myself the obvious. He looked like Veronica
Lake’s 25-year-old daughter, in his straggly ash-blond wig, and his green
dressing gown – with, Lord forbid, a wholly un-Victorian train – which together made him into the campest, most un-masculine,
powerless-seeming Sweeney ever seen. This Sweeney was clearly more than just
pals with Anthony. And he certainly didn’t loom for an instant. Well, you can’t
when you look so ridiculous. Dangerous? Haha! The Demon Barber? More like a
Wizard of Oz, or an inhabitant of Rivendell. Horror!
Tarte’s fine singing
and acting could not erase his hilarious visual image ... and then, after displaying
himself in King’s Fool tatters, in act two, he appeared looking like the easter
bunny, in candy-stripes, or the frog footman from Alice in Wonderland ... oh! how to kill a performance and a show! Crucify
the costumier!
Mr Tarte, let me
see and hear you henceforth as Onegin or Figaro … but, please, not ever again, Miss Sweeney
Todd from Melbourne! What a stupid, damned shame.
The rest of the
performers, from the resident company, I pass by with a nod. All (with one
exception) had fine opera voices, finely used. Good luck to them in Der Rosenkavalier. Barely a one – I
except Beadle Bamford (Manfred Wulfert) – knows much about acting. Joanna and
Anthony (aberrantly cast with a baritonic Siegfried Jersualem of 40) seemed to
think they were singing Lakme: not a spark of personality or humour,
the Lucy – with a glorious mezzo – did frizzy wig acting, and the judge –
handicapped by the restoration (why?) of that boring flagellation aria, which
helps make the show far too long, looked altogether younger than Anthony!
But that’s opera
house casting. Cast for the voice, and expect the rest to follow. Oh, we’ll be
OK.
I’m grumbling a
lot. But I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t feel the production could have been so
easily so much better. The raw materials were there … but, well, if you’re NOT
doing burlesque … what are we doing with beach-ball babes, with that ghastly
parade of chorus pie-fodder, a pinch of the Hunyak episode from Chicago, and with above all the
candy-striped pie factory (in Fleet Street?) with Lucy falling embarrassingly around everywhere …
and if you ARE …?
One more and a weighty
complaint, Mr Director. The most important of all. Where was the oven? The
furnace? The witch’s oven? The pits of hell? As in Don Giovanni, the most important image in the whole show?
CUT?! Might as well cut Tosca's leap or Isolde's death. Germany has a bad record for
mutilating classic shows, but this was too much. We ended up with a Hamlet pile of corpses instead of a
Tod-Slaughter cataclysm …
Well, one thing that this production has left me pretty sure of, is that Sweeney Todd is absolutely unsuited to an opera house. The lovely
choral and ensemble sounds (Sweeney’s letter was a joy!) just don’t make up for
the losses in style and coherence and drama. Sigh. Sweeney Todd seems somehow to resist a coherent production.
But if we could
take Leon Greene, Ms MacFarlane plus the best of the rest from the last 30
years, plus a trimmed up script and score, and put then into a pie together … we
might indeed have ‘the best pie in London’.
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