Sweeney Todd review – Sondheim’s demon barber is still a cut above

Birmingham Rep
With tremendous singing from Ramin Karimloo and Meow Meow, Joe Murphy’s superb staging of the story is full of dark gothic humour

Stephen Sondheim was drawn to fairytales – and not just in the storybook theme of Into the Woods. The origins of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, lie in Victorian melodrama, but in the hands of the composer, working with book writer Hugh Wheeler in response to a play by Christopher Bond, it is steeped in the tropes of folklore.

The story of a serial killer who provides the grisly contents for his landlady’s pies is ripe with the kind of dark gothic humour that appealed to the Brothers Grimm. There are shades of Hansel and Gretel in the cavernous oven and of Little Red Riding Hood in the prospect of being turned into someone’s dinner. The composer’s lyrics even quote the nursery rhyme Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake, Baker’s Man.

At Birmingham Rep until 15 August
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