There I was, in mid-December 2024, minding my own business, scrolling down, as you do, and I saw it on the Playbill page: a wonderful video clip advertising Barrie Kosky’s production of Sweeney Todd at Komische Oper in Berlin. I had whole body reaction, booked one of the last 20 or so seats left in the season, which closed 4 January 2025, having no idea how I was going to actually pay for the trip …manifested the wherewithal, and lo and behold, as they say…
This production, with some significant cast changes, will be presented in Strasbourg at La Filature from 17 June to 6 July 2025, hence this review.
In Strasbourg Mrs Lovett will be played by Natalie Dessay, Sweeney by Scott Hendricks, Judge Turpin by Jens Larsen, who is a company member from Komische Oper Berlin. The Berlin creative team remains the same.
Berlin New Year’s Eve performance
OK first off… I know this show very well – every word, pretty much. I have never been in it, but have seen many – all right, 10 – versions so far, counting this one, mostly on stage, including several in Australia, both professional and high-quality pro-am, Patti Lupone/Cerveris on Broadway, the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp screen version, and Angela Lansbury/Len Cariou on video.
I discovered watching this production that I am more of a purist than I would’ve expected to be.
The good things first: wonderful ensemble work – Kosky’s gestural design throughout was excellent. Really terrific staging and magicking around the stage of furniture and people. Excellent choral work, too.
The Komische Oper has a company of performers and for some productions it invites guests in to share roles. In the case of Sweeney Todd, Barrie Kosky invited bass Scott Wilde to share the role of Turpin with Jens Larsen, while Mrs Lovett was shared by Berlin favourite Dagmar Manzel and British Rosie Aldridge. I saw Manzel as Lovett, Wilde as Turpin.
After a painted Music Hall swag (that looks creepily like the striations of a stomach lining or oesophageal tract) disappears, the stage design is monochrome photographs on soaring flats, of depressed inner-city turn-of-the-century probably London (or, as easily, Berlin). The chorus, all in assorted shades of dirty grey, start facing upstage and turn, white-faced and blank, to sing the Introduction. Part 2, when the colluding pair are rolling in wealth, has a witty take on the innards-pink of the Part 1 front drop – everything is blood and milk (not of human kindness!), a cheap nauseating mid-pink – Lovett’s dress and décor, redolent of an ageing Barbie, topped by a marcelled hairdo.
The orchestra was excellent, but were some of the tempos in that performance a touch fast for the cast singing as clearly as possible in a second language, and managing to breathe?
There were a few points where Sweeney (Christopher Purves, a native English speaker) and Johanna (Alma Sadé, German) each lost a section of their songs – Johanna’s fiendishly fast, difficult part of the quartet with Anthony, Bamford and Turpin, and Sweeney’s ‘Epiphany’. Room for actually breathing was at a premium.
Most of the cast were performing in their second (or third in the case of Pirelli) language – a big thing when it’s Sondheim with his challenging rhythms and often difficult music – plus you have to be audible and act, all at once.
Purves as Sweeney, was a dogged, solid man with a glorious voice and cold, vengeful fire in his eyes – a dark, pain-driven presence throughout, bent on destruction.
Anthony (Hubert Zapiór) was gawky and sweet-voiced – a wonderful energetic contrast to Purves’ Sweeney’s inexorable drive to achieving his goal.
As Johanna, Sadé had a bumpy night, as mentioned, and was positioned oddly for her ‘Green Finch’ song – we could hear more than see her – was this the point? Tough on the singer, a little face trapped halfway up a side flat.
Tobias was played by Tom Schimon, who has wonderful brio and was terrific – maybe he was a bit knowing in the selling of Pirelli’s ‘miracle elixir’ scene to then be so naïve later with Mrs Lovett in ‘Nothing’s Gonna Harm You’, but he had a lot of fun with this gift of a role.
Beadle Bamford (James Kryshak) was wonderfully oily-snakey, weaving and wheedling around. My skin crawled watching him, which is surely a compliment to his creepy performance and wonderful musicality.
Judge Turpin was Scott Wilde, one of two people playing this dastardly creature. Jens Larsen, a company member who set the staging of this scenes, was sharing the Turpin role with Wilde, an American bass, whose rendition of ‘Johanna Johanna’ was delivered on the floor, shirtless, with a hand down his pants writhing to the pulse. The hairdo of a woman two rows in front blocked my view of this event – I assume he kept good, frenzied rhythm. I’ve never seen this song treated so literally before, but the music made the action irresistible.
Bettlerin the Beggar Woman (Sigalit Feig) played Sweeney’s lost Lucy as an odd leaping animal, animated by her madness, poor thing.
Adolfo Pirelli, the conman, was played by Ivan Turšić who is Polish-born, singing in English and terrible cod Italian and, briefly, Irish. He was fine in all three of the four languages we heard. Pirelli is such a fun role … and then you die.
Mrs Lovett was played by Dagmar Manzel, a local Berlin star and favourite. Her first entrance into ‘Worst Pies in London’, was propelled forward in a US diner/tiled butcher’s shop truck, and we heard several F-bombs before she appeared from below the counter of the serving hatch. Whether this was a directorial decision or the actor’s addition, I rather minded it (purist alert!). How would Sondheim have felt, and does it matter? I think that F-bombs gild the already elegantly mucky lily. Not that swearing per se bothers me at all, but in this context, unnecessary, I thought.
Vocally, as we know, these are bastards of songs – Manzel dealt with the challenges by swooping across her range unexpectedly – she has a great, gravelly low register. It seemed to me to highlight the inherent difficulties of the song. She went for simpering girlish throughout, rather than cold-blooded, and I felt the balance was off between her and her Sweeney; I didn’t believe for a second that there was any sex at any point, no matter how perverse it may have been. They were on two different planets.
At the performance I saw, Mrs Lovett’s Part 2 entrance line was in German, much to the amusement of the audience, then she said, “Oh that’s right, it’s in English”, got another laugh, and went on with the English dialogue as written. There were surtitles for those who weren’t familiar with the book and lyrics.
Audibility – back to the language and sound balance, which was less than ideal – the Sweeney/Lovett asides in Pirelli’s sales scene largely went for nothing. My sound engineer friend explained how difficult this is to manage successfully – beside being on top of a chorus of enthusiastic elixir-buyers – but I’ve never had a problem hearing the words before.
Sweeney Todd was playing in repertoire and I saw the first show after a few days’ break – it looked as though they hadn’t had a run-through in the intervening days. The staging of Lucy’s rape during ‘Poor Thing’, for example, was untidy, needed more edge, and attack, literally.
Read: Music review: Timeless Stories from Classic to Hollywood, Cadogan Hall
When there are several performers playing key roles, I always want to see them all – FOMO – so I’m sorry I missed Aldridge as Nellie Lovett, and I am this moment pondering how to get to see Natalie Dessay – one of the great actors on the opera stage (have a look at the excellent film Becoming Traviata, filmed in Aix-en-Provence in 2012, and a clip of her in Orpheus aux Enfers). I think she’ll have a whale of a time with Mrs Lovett.
Despite my quibbles, I was thrilled to see Kosky’s take on this legendary work. A perfect marriage of director and subject. See it in Strasbourg if you can.
Sweeney Todd, presented by Komische Oper Berlin
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
From the play by Christopher Bond
Originally directed on Broadway by Harold Prince
Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick
Musical Director – James Gaffigan
Director: Barrie Kosky
Costume and Set Designer: Katrin Lea Tag
Dramaturg: Daniel Andrés Eberhard
Chorus master: David Cavelius
Lighting: Olaf Freese
Berlin cast: Christopher Purves, Dagmar Manzel/Rosie Aldridge, Hubert Zapiór, Alma Sadé/Nikki Treurniet, Tom Schimon, Scott Wilde/Jens Larsen, James Kryshak, Sigalit Feig, Ivan Turšić, Simon Walfisch, Matthew Spenke
Solo Ensemble: Katrin Le Provost, Anna-Lisa Gebhardt, Katrin Hacker, Patricia Amaya, Miyashita, Carsten Lau, Philipp Schreyer, Myung Hoon Park, Ezra Jung, Matthias Spenke
Strasbourg cast: Todd Scott Hendricks, Natalie Dessay, Noah Harrison, Marie Oppert, Jasmine Roy, Cormac Diamond, Jens Larsen, Paul Curievici, Glen Cunningham
Choir of the National Opera of the Rhine
Philharmonic Orchestra of Strasbourg
Sweeney Todd was performed at the Schiller Theatre in West Berlin in 2024 and heads to La Filature, Opéra National du Rhin, Strasbourg from 17 June to 6 July 2025.
