Theatre review: Follies

Follies is probably the best-known Stephen Sondheim musical I hadn’t yet seen, and the sheer scale of Dominic Cooke’s production at the National suggests why it’s a risky proposition for any smaller theatre to take on. Between 1918 and the early 1940s, Weismann’s Follies were a Broadway staple, but the story takes place in 1971, and the theatre where they played is being demolished to make way for offices. On the building’s last night, Weismann invites the show’s former stars to the site for a farewell party and to reminisce about their time in the limelight. In Vicki Mortimer’s striking design the theatre is already half-demolished, and what remains of it is haunted by the ghosts of the characters’ younger selves, who recreate the routines from their heyday, and watch the people they’ll turn into in curiosity and sometimes horror.

Concert review: Sweeney Todd (London Coliseum)

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.