Review: Eat the Rich

Sunday, 2 October 2016, 1:56 pm
Article: Max Rashbrooke

Review: Eat the Rich

Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street
NZ Opera
In Wellington until 4 October, then Christchurch 12-15 October
Reviewer: Max Rashbrooke

The French economist Thomas Piketty made waves a couple of years ago by predicting that the wealth dynamics of the twenty-first century might look strikingly like those of the Victorian era: lots of wealth about, but concentrated in a few hands. And so it’s fitting to have a revival of Sweeney Todd, a musical thriller – by the legendary Stephen Sondheim – that explicitly sets itself against the injustice of the nineteenth century world, as embodied by the vast metropolis of London.

Sweeney himself puts the matter very directly: “There's a hole in the world like a great black pit / and the vermin of the world inhabit it / and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit /and it goes by the name of London. / At the top of the hole sit the privileged few / Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo / turning beauty to filth and greed.”

Sweeney has reason to be bitter, having been banished from England on trumped-up charges and had his wife and daughter taken from him by the oily Judge Turpin. And he gives that bitterness full vent: with the aid of the manic Mrs Lovett – proud baker of “the worst pies in London” – he turns his barbershop into a realm of vengeance on the judge and various other, quite extraneous people who come his way. Even without resorting to spoilers, it can be said that the phrase ‘eat the rich’ has never had a truer ring.

Some people will be familiar with the film version, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and this production has a broadly similar feel, evoking a London of prostitutes, con artists, beggars, noblemen and their enforcers, a London of broken high windows and dark corners. The production does a good job of dealing with the fact that Sweeney Todd is explicitly melodramatic but also extremely funny, as summed up in the lovely couplet about Sweeney’s dispatching of his clients: “So what if none of their souls were saved? / They went to their maker impeccably shaved … by Sweeney Todd.” In this production, both the gruesome violence and the humour are delivered with gusto and skill, without any jarring of tone, and the balance between the two feels about right.

It helps that the two leads turn in pretty stellar performances. Teddy Tahu Rhodes brings to the role of the demon barber his exceptional physical presence and powerful, rich baritone, the latter so strong as to be almost too loud with the amplification it gets in this musical. So commanding is his voice, so full of regret and anger, that it is almost impossible to listen subsequently to recordings of Depp’s version without being utterly disappointed.

Rhodes’s acting could possibly be improved on – a touch more physical expression, a fraction less uprightness in the early scenes – but no-one at Friday night’s opening will forget his searing interpretation of the saddest, loneliest and most twisted of men. And he has the perfect match in Australian soprano Antoinette Halloran, whose Mrs Lovett almost upstages the demon barber: not only is her voice beautiful but her acting is exceptionally good, allowing her to deliver bawdy lines with glee but also put across a sense of vulnerability and longing. She sparkles and tugs at the heartstrings at the same time.

The leads’ level isn’t quite matched across the whole production, however. It doesn’t help that the contrasting ‘good’ characters, Anthony and Joanna, are pretty dull roles, but it still felt like James Benjamin Rodgers and Amelia Berry, though both likeable, could have done more to lift them out of the musical theatre stock of standard effects. But there are superb turns from Philip Rhodes, as the sex-obsessed, hypocritical Judge Turpin, and from Helen Medlyn, both comic and touching as the Beggar Woman who turns out to be more than she seems.

Ultimately one of the biggest stars is the ensemble, whose comments on the action are sung sharply and delivered with high drama, their faces emerging out of a haze of smoke and fog. Their near-constant action also helps keep the tempo high and remind the viewer of the swirling, awful, violent turbulence of nineteenth-century metropolis life.

Sweeney Todd sets itself pretty clearly against the ruling order: in the fine tradition of blunt satire, it has no hesitation in pointing up the hypocrisies of those in authority or in suggesting that, whatever evil the ordinary folk fall into, they are playing out a drama whose roles have been pre-scripted from on high. With this dark morality, Sondheim recalls a famous remark from his fellow provocateur and playwright, Bertold Brecht, who once asked: what is robbing a bank, compared with owning one? The dice, in other words, are always loaded against those without power. But if you have to go down, you might as well go down fighting, as Sweeney Todd demonstrates. It’s a grim triumph, but a triumph nonetheless.

© Scoop Media

Max Rashbrooke

Journalist

Max Rashbrooke is a journalist and author working in Wellington, New Zealand, where he writes about politics, finance and social issues.

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