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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Sasha Regan, Christopher Mundy (music director).
Cast: Christopher Howell, Emma Francis
Description: Intmate production of Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller, with Christopher Howell and Emma Francis. Special effects are from members of the Magic Circle. Directed by Sasha Regan.
Trains: Tube/BR: Southwark/Waterloo 
Phone: 0207261 9876
Website: www.upandcoming.webeden.co.uk
When thieves fall out: Sweeney Todd (Christopher Howell) turns on his murderous ally Mrs Lovett (Emma Francis)
It Is a rare and heartening sight to see a queue for returns forming in a Fringe theatre on a cold Tuesday evening.
Yet such is the Union’s burgeoning reputation for innovative stagings of musicals — for which it was rightly awarded a Peter Brook Empty Space Award this year — that demand is high and seats are already scarce for this superb revival of Stephen Sondheim’s superior gore fest.
The sheer scale of the Union’s ambition here would put not only its peers but also better-funded rivals to shame.
The live accompaniment is niftily and tunefully provided by a grand piano and a church organ. There is a cast of 17, including a West End-style chorus of eight, and they are all better singers than Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, which is good news for Sondheim’s sophisticated, literate lyrics.
Director Sasha Regan fills the tiny playing area so cleverly that all of grey, sinister, stinking London is suggested.
Mrs Lovett, joyously played by Emma Francis, still hasn’t read a cookbook, revelling in her claim to produce “The Worst Pies in London”.
An enterprising businesswoman, she’s certainly got the hots for Christopher Howell’s bloody yet oddly bloodless Todd, who would better suggest a man on a revenge mission if he were a little more minatory.
Leon Kay and Katie Stokes are outstanding as the pure-voiced young lovers who develop a fatal habit for wrong times and wrong places.
Occasionally the lack of microphones means that we lose important words of plot-heavy songs, yet the opportunity to hear performers’ voices unadorned like this is rare in our heavily amplified times.
As Signor Pirelli himself might have put it, a miracle elixir of a night.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
James Dahling.... its an operetta (at least) its a through composed score. I'm sure you can appreciate what that means.
and no, its far from widely agreed that it worked using actors who can barely carry a tune in an opera.
different interpretation yes, very, very different.
- Scott, London
Fi, dahhling, comments like "they are all better singers than Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter" really don't mean much in this instance as I'm sure even you can appreciate that those actors had a completely different interpretation of the roles in the film. Most, if not all the stage productions of Sweeney cast singers who act rather than actors who sing. I'm sure you agree that the movie was a superb interpretation of the score and script captured in a different medium.
- James M, Los Angeles, USA
