Blunt and bloody: ENO's Sweeney Todd reviewed

A wicked deception is sprung in the opening moments of this New York-originated concert staging of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd. The English National Opera orchestra, liberated from the pit, is duly assembled on stage at the London Coliseum; flower arrangements and a Steinway grand add to the formality, and right on cue the conductor and cast, suitably attired in evening wear and with scores in hand, take their places behind a line of music stands. The applause dies and Bryn Terfel turns to the conductor, clears his throat and nods. The whirring ostinato introducing ‘The Ballad of Sweeney Todd’ begins — furtively — and Sweeney, of course, has the first word.

It’s a little like flinging down the proverbial gauntlet, dramatically speaking, but what we’re not expecting (spoiler alert) is that he — the demon barber of Fleet Street — should fling down his score, too. In a chain reaction of civil disobedience the promised ‘concert performance’ is abandoned and anarchy ensues until the flowers are strewn across the stage, the plush velvet drapes ripped down, the piano upended, and the temple of art is unceremoniously transformed into an urban jungle with banners of Banksy-like graffiti and what will become the leitmotif for this entire saga of revenge — a bloody handprint.