The cruel and unusual things people do to make others' lives miserable are on display at the Coliseum; but enough about whoever designed the cloakroom, Lonny Price's New York concert staging of
Sweeney Todd is being restaged by the ENO. Having been transported to Australia for a crime he didn't commit, Benjamin Barker (Bryn Terfel) escapes and returns to Fleet Street where, calling himself Sweeney Todd, he reopens his old barber shop above a pie shop. He quickly establishes himself as the best barber in London, to attract the attention of Judge Turpin (Philip Quast) and Beadle Bamford (Alex Gaumond,) the men who wronged him, with bloody revenge in mind. But the bloodshed begins long before he can get to them, when a rival barber (John Owen-Jones) tries to blackmail him. Todd now has a body to get rid of - while downstairs Mrs Lovett's (Emma Thompson) pie shop is short of fresh meat.
