Sweeney Todd in Concert

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler

National Symphony Orchestra Ireland
Anthony Gabriele, conductor

Rob Houchen, Sweeney Todd
Anna-Jane-Casey, Mrs Lovett

Andy Armitage Anthony Hope
Rachel Reid Johanna
Eoin Daly Judge Turpin
Ciaran McKenna Adolfo Pirelli
Meg Kathleen Hardy Beggar Woman
John Óg Tobias Ragg
Isaac Casey Beadle Bamfor

Séimí Campbell, director
Sarah Travis, music supervisor

James Cousins, movement director 

‘Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd… the demon barber of Fleet Street’ 

National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, by arrangement with Music Theatre International, proudly partners with Irish Youth Musical Theatre (IYMT) and the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) to present a concert performance of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler.

The role of Sweeney Todd, the titular barber will be played by Rob Houchen and his equally demented accomplice, pie shop-owner, Mrs Lovett, will be played by Anna-Jane Casey.  All other roles have been cast on the basis of open auditions for young actors in training and recently graduated actors. In addition, more than 68 young actors will join the company in Featured Ensemble and Chorus roles

About Sweeney Todd

First staged on Broadway in 1979, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd has claimed its place in theatres, concert halls, opera houses, and, in Tim Burton’s star-studded 2007 Hollywood adaptation, on film.

Part musical thriller, part Victorian melodrama, part macabre cartoon, it is one of the truly great modern musicals, lauded with prestigious awards on both sides of the Atlantic.

A thrill-a-minute experience of grim horror and gruesome fun, at its heart are two of musical theatre’s most unforgettable characters: Sweeney Todd, the titular barber, and his equally demented accomplice, pie shop-owner, Mrs Lovett, who develop a lucrative but murderous sideline in manufacturing ‘the best pies in London’.

Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian ‘penny dreadful’ in 1846 – since when he has come to rival Jack the Ripper for notoriety – although it was Christopher Bond’s 1970 play offering an explanation for his murderous ways that caught Sondheim’s eye and imagination.

Boasting one of Sondheim’s most accomplished and accessible scores, it has two stand-out songs: the yearning hymnal to Todd’s daughter, ‘Johanna’, and the lilting, loving ‘Not While I’m Around’.

Elsewhere the recurring menace of ‘The Ballad of Sweeney Todd’ alternates with the black humour of ‘The Worst Pies in London’, the tongue-in-cheek Grand Guignol of ‘A Little Priest’, and the pretty Victorian pastiche of ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’ and ‘By the Sea’. 

Sondheim himself described Sweeney Todd as a ‘dark operetta’, but added: ‘what [it] really is a movie for the stage’.

Recommended for audience age 12 and up. Sweeney Todd contains mature themes and parental guidance is advised

Presented by National Symphony Orchestra Ireland in partnership with Irish Youth Musical Theatre and the Royal Irish Academy of Music