Tuesday 27th March 2012 by Will Langdale
A quick pick of what’s hot right now in the TicketTree.com office
Pie-ce to meat you
There’s been some really interesting things on the go in the West End this month. Top of the playbill at TicketTree has been the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical Sweeney Todd at the Adelphi Theatre. The neo-Victorian tale has Michael Ball in the titular role, with Imelda Staunton as Mrs Lovett, the pie-selling corpse-cooking landlady.
Sweeney Todd is the story of an avenging barber who intends to polish off the corrupt judge who banished him to a penal colony and raped his wife. One thing leads to another, and the demon barber ends up killing quite a few more people than was perhaps first intended. Naturally, a disposal method is of the utmost importance to your run-of-the-mill serial killer, and comes in the form of Mrs Lovett’s pie shop, where the fresh meat is baked into a tasty snack. Apparently pie anxiety was a potent topic for Victorian penny dreadfuls!
The latest production is a transfer from Chichester Theatre – the same place the current London Run of Singin’ in the Rain came from. Michael Ball has a distinctly un-Michael Ball-like appearance, and according to some sources he lost a fair amount of weight for the part. Reviews are strong, with most of the national papers not daring to stray below a solid 4 stars, and a few – The Times’ Dominic Maxwell and The Guardian’s Michael Billington – craning their necks to see 5. It’s good to see that the show can get out of the long shadow cast by the original Tony Award-winning production.
Awards ahoy
In other news, nominations have been announced for the Oliviers, with TicketTree favourite Matilda bagging a crazy amount of nods. Graham Linehan’s stage adaptation The Ladykillers also has multiple shots at an award, and the National Theatre’s latest golden boy, One Man Two Guvnors, joins it with five nominations apiece.
A royally good transfer
Finally, readers may have noticed that one thing we rarely put on the front page is packages for the Royal Court Theatre, the main reason being that runs tend to be short and tickets sparse for quite a small auditorium. Happily, two excellent shows have just made the jump to the slightly larger Duke of York’s theatre, and we’re proud to be able to put something together for them!
Jumpy stars Tamsin Grieg as an ex-peace camp protestor who finds herself in conflict with her promiscuous daughter and shop-proprietor husband. Posh is a satire of well-heeled old money students in the setting of a Bullingdon club-esque dinner. Both look like a fantastic evening’s entertainment, and we’re really pleased to be able to offer them!
Blog discount
As part of today’s blog we’re offering discounts on Sweeney Todd packages right the way through until April 15th – that’s two whole weeks of saving! To claim your cool 5% off just pop the voucher code SWEENEYBLOG in on the payment page.