North West Theatre

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

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Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler
09 Jun 11 to 02 Jul 11
Octagon Theatre

Sweeney Todd returns home to London having been wrongly deported and robbed of his family by the crooked Judge Turpin.

Reunited with his beloved razor, and accompanied by the love-struck pie shop owner Mrs Lovett, he sets about cooking up his own delicious revenge on society. And with business booming, ‘the Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ has plans to put the Judge on the menu.

Octagon presents Sondheim's Sweeney Todd

The Octagon Theatre Bolton presents Stephen Sondheim’s epic musical thriller Sweeney Todd. A dark and comic musical; this wonderfully macabre and gruesome story of betrayal, love and bloody revenge promises to be unlike any Sweeney Todd production seen before.
What's On Stage

It’s a tribute to the adventurous programming of David Thacker, and the vision of Elizabeth Newman that this is an absolute triumph... relocates the action to what looks like a 1990s gay fetish club. It’s odd, but sort of works... Sometimes, there’s a nagging sense of an intellectual idea creating an agenda for the production, rather than letting it breathe... Lucy Sierra’s set is imaginative... Andy Smith’s sound design needs tweaking... Tom Attwood’s musical direction is truly inspired... If [Tobias] Beer’s Sweeney... is a little large in his reactions, this is compensated by Rubin’s Lovett... glimmers of ‘amateur dramatics crowd acting’... genuinely outstanding production...
The Public Reviews (Rating: 4/5)
...the design is a confusing mix of traditional Victoriana and contemporary references... Lucy Sierra’s set is used well... Of particular note are Mark Heenehan as Judge Turpin and Ruth Alexander Rubin as Mrs Lovett... Adam Barlow puts in a beautiful vocal performance... Though adventurous, this is a production that is perhaps over-crowded with good ideas... the muddled approach.
What's On Stage (Rating: 3/5)
...brilliant revival by Elizabeth Newman... Tobias Beer’s rich voice... having to restrain himself to play, quite superbly, the cold, ruthless killer... Ruth Alexander Rubin, who steals the show... wonderful support from, among others, Adam Barlow... John Addison does splendid work... Mark Heenehan’s gloriously loathsome self-flagellating villain...
The Stage
[Elizabeth] Newman emphasises the manner in which each of the characters is subject to their particular perversion... Ruth Alexander Rubin's impressively sung Mrs Lovett... the success with which Newman integrates instruments into the action is variable. Mrs Lovett's acquisition of a plastic portable keyboard feels like an anachronism too far... potentially a combination of the best of all worlds, it can seem at times to be neither one thing nor the other.
The Guardian (Rating: 3/5)
The CSI idea... is nothing more than a shallow director's conceit that gives back less than it takes away... Some elements of the staging could be applauded for their imagination if they were used by a tiny fringe company with no budget but on the main stage of a major regional theatre look strange... a man holding a violin bow has rather less impact than the glint of light off a sharpened razor... Tobias Beer... a lot of the time his performance comes across as empty posturing. Ruth Alexander Rubin, however, is a perfect choice as Mrs Lovett... Sondheim's beautifully dark and atmospheric music and blackly comic lyrics survive the sound problems and some thin orchestrations...
British Theatre Guide