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- Anything for the weekend? David Arnsperger as Sweeney Todd and Janis Kelly as Mrs Lovett. Pictures: Johan Persson IT’S the first day of Chorus rehearsals
and the Welsh National Opera singers are watching spellbound as Sweeney
Todd director James Brining describes his vision for the work. A co-production with Wales Millennium Centre and
West Yorkshire Playhouse, this is a revival of a production James has
already directed twice before – but this time it’s going to be bigger
and bolder. James’ enthusiasm is infectious. In his jeans and
checked shirt, he paces up and down, waves his arms and laughs a lot –
not something one would expect when discussing Stephen Sondheim’s dark
musical about the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And James is in no doubts of just how dark that
is. “The emotional stakes are so high, there’s jeopardy, tragedy,
politics,” he says. “This piece is so powerful. It’s the combination of
the emotional personal journey and the political aspects and when you
add in the music it’s a truly shattering pie Sondheim’s musical tells the tale of barber
Sweeney who, after 15 years of wrongful imprisonment, returns to London
in the hope of finding his wife and child. When told of their fate,
Sweeney loses faith in humanity and joins with baker Mrs Lovett in a
gruesome pact. Setting up a joint business, Sweeney’s customers
become victims, providing the ingredients for Mrs Lovett’s famous meat
pies.
James is choosing to move this production away
from the Victorian gothic in which it normally sits into a more
contemporary setting. Now it’s the 1970s and ‘80s, an era of Thatcherite
individualism, a time when care in the community closed institutions and
left people adrift and a time when greed was good. This modern setting aims to bring all the
audience into the world of Sweeney Todd, blurring the bonds between
fiction and fantasy, sanity and insanity, and hope with despair. All of these initial explanations from James are
taking place in a giant rehearsal room at the WNO base at the Wales
Millennium Centre in Cardiff. We are sitting within the set for the show
so the chorus already have a clear idea of the visual side of the
production. It’s an austere set. The giant walls are
industrially metallic, there is a grubby sink in the centre and on the
rear wall are plastic curtains reminiscent of an abattoir. Huge shipping
crates will move around the set – each a site for a different part of
the story. Katie Heath-Jones, WNO Deputy Stage Manager for
Sweeney, says the next few weeks will see the chorus not only learning
their roles but also experimenting on how to use this space. “One of the challenges is that we are taking a
production which has already been staged elsewhere but it is being
extended. In the past there have been maybe just six people in the
chorus but we have 29 in this production so it’s about using the space
to its best advantage. “James works in a very organic way so as we go
forward and we see how the characters interact in this space he will be
reacting to that.” The huge set also needs to be ready to tour. “At
Wales Millennium Centre we have a very large stage area but some of the
venues we visit have much less room so we are rehearsing in the touring
set,” says Katie. “The cast find it easier to then suddenly have more
space when they perform than the other way round.” Alongside rehearsing for Sweeney, some of the
chorus are also performing in the other autumn season productions
Bellini’s I Puritani and Handel’s Orlando so it’s been a busy few weeks. It’s a tough season in other ways. At the end of
November when Sweeney returns to Wales Millennium Centre the company
will be performing it as a matinee and evening performance with a tight
turnaround time. And with Sweeney Todd being renowned for its
The production also poses some challenges for
WNO’s props department. “Most of the props have come from West Yorkshire
Playhouse so we do not have to make them from scratch,” says Sava Bell,
Assistant Stage Manager. “But we do need to do some planning for the
pies. “We have some prop pies which have been created
by West Yorkshire Playhouse but the production also includes some of the
pies being eaten so we will need some fresh ones. We’ve not looked into
it in detail yet but because this is a touring production it might mean
that we have to find different places to source the pies for each venue
on the tour. “We have done this kind
of thing before. Last season we had
Hansel & Gretel and there is a huge
amount of fresh food needed for that show. So in each venue I was
sourcing frozen cakes from local shops. We would pick them up in the
morning and allow them enough time to defrost so we could use them for
the performance in the evening. You also have to make sure you clean it
up properly so it doesn’t get smelly!” And there’s one other problem with the meat pies
in Sweeney Todd – Janis Kelly who plays Mrs Lovett is vegetarian. “At
the moment there is a scene in which she takes a bite from one of the
pies – we’ll have to decide what to do about that!” says Sava. Being the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who
dispatches his customers with a razor blade, Sweeney Todd does also need
quite a bit of blood. “Our props department is always ready for that,”
says Sava. “We have it in lots of different size ‘pockets’ and the cast
have to carry them with them on stage. They then burst them open at the
right moment. It does depend a bit though on whether we need squirting
blood but the props department can cope with any kind of blood
requirement!” Back in the rehearsal room the chorus are being
given the details of their individual profiles. Over the next few weeks
they will develop these characters until they become second nature. They
will learn the dimensions of the stage space, they will use the various
props and they will enter the world of Sweeney Todd. It’s a world that James is determined will catch
the imaginations of the audiences who watch the performance. “I first saw Sweeney Todd at the National Theatre
in the 1990s and it was extraordinary,” he says. “Emotionally and
theatrically it just gripped me. It couldn’t have higher emotional
stakes and everyone can relate to it. “By bringing it into contemporary times and by
making all the cast a part of the story-telling, everyone watching also
becomes a part of the story. It’s compelling.”
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of work.”
visceral staging, this is asking a lot of the team.