Strong stomachs and weak voices

Rating: 4/10 (14 December 2008)

99 words or less (well, 141):
When you watch experienced musical actors they do not simply sing the songs. They act them. Depp is reasonably good at this, though he tries to channel David Bowie to distraction. Carter, as the dotty pie shop owner, Mrs. Lovett, doesn't seem to get this at all. The lyrics don't come off the page. Her interpretation of the character is dreary, downtrodden, mousy. Whether this is her idea or the director's I don't know, but the effect is to make the production unrelentingly bleak.
The Broadway Mrs. Lovett provided a small amount of comic dottiness that helped ameliorate the inherent bleakness of the play. That is gone here, and we are left with nothing but insanity, blood, death, irony. The subtleties of the original are gone, washed away in the buckets of blood the director seems to have such affection for.
Ah, I feel better now.