Joe Murphy's Production of Sweeney Todd at Birmingham: Review Round-Up

The reviews are in for Joe Murphy's production of Sweeney Todd at Birmingham Rep. What did the critics think of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's demonic slasher?

The Times – ★★★★★

The strongest broadsheet endorsement comes from Rachel Halliburton in The Times, who awards the production a full five stars. The headline calls the show “razor-sharp” and “bloodcurdling”, while the review describes Murphy’s production as a version that exposes both the “depravity and humanity” in Christopher Bond’s gruesome story. Halliburton is especially impressed by the unusual clarity of the staging: despite the musical’s darkness and complexity, the production is executed with exceptional lucidity.

Elin Steele’s design receives particular admiration. The enormous statue of Justice looming over the action becomes both spectacle and metaphor, while the stage simultaneously suggests architectural grandeur and the filth of life at the bottom of London society. Halliburton also singles out the precision of the ensemble: the opening chorus has diction “as sharp as a scalpel cutting into ice”.

Karimloo brings brooding intensity to Sweeney, while Meow Meow supplies a vivid, grotesquely comic counterweight. David Bedella’s Judge Turpin, Shem Omari James’s Anthony, Jo Stephenson’s Johanna, Julius D’Silva’s Beadle and Jack Gibson’s Tobias contribute to what the review considers an exceptionally strong company. Leo Munby’s musical direction and Rory Beaton’s lighting also earn praise. The verdict is emphatic: Murphy has created a Sweeney that is simultaneously horrifying, funny and heartbreakingly human.

The Guardian – ★★★★

The Guardian’s Mark Fisher is similarly impressed, describing Murphy’s work as a “superb staging” and praising the “tremendous” singing of the company. Murphy, he argues, recognises the almost folkloric quality of the piece and consequently gives it “the full operatic treatment”. Steele’s austere grey London and Beaton’s icy lighting turn the chorus into something resembling ghostly statues, while the gigantic figure of Lady Justice makes the production’s obsession with corrupted law physically unavoidable.

Fisher is particularly interested in Karimloo’s restraint. Rather than playing Todd as an immediately explosive psychopath, he remains unnervingly controlled: his “chilling surface calm” suggests a man expending enormous effort to suppress his murderous rage. That gives Todd an unexpected nobility despite his actions. Meow Meow provides the opposite energy: her Lovett is a witty, swaggering mixture of comedy, venality and opportunism, without sacrificing the musical demands of the role.

The principal reservation is with Sondheim rather than Murphy – Fisher feels there are “a couple of songs too many” – but the overall judgement is unmistakably admiring.

The Stage — ★★★★

Reviewer Holly Williams gives the production four stars, calling it “grandly monumental”. Her review particularly admires Murphy’s willingness to embrace the enormous dimensions of the Rep rather than attempt to make Sweeney artificially intimate. The result is a stark production exploiting the “operatic scale of the Rep’s huge stage”.

That description captures one of the most consistent themes across the reviews: this is a comparatively economical production – a small acting company and reduced orchestra – that nevertheless looks and sounds much bigger. Murphy and Steele have apparently found a visual language capable of making the Rep’s cavernous auditorium an asset, giving Sondheim’s score and Wheeler's book genuine monumental weight.

WhatsOnStage — ★★★★★

WhatsOnStage describes the production as a “dazzling” new interpretation capable of producing “goosebumps of excitement”. Alison Brinkworth calls Steele’s set “remarkable”: the huge Lady Justice presides over a London blackened by grime and moral corruption, while smoke and Beaton’s carefully composed shadows add to the oppressive atmosphere. Despite only a seven-piece orchestra and relatively small company, the production “feels like a big-scale epic”.

Karimloo is judged “perfectly cast”: brooding and menacing but sufficiently charismatic to retain the audience’s sympathy, with outstanding vocals that give emotional weight to the demanding writing. Meow Meow’s broad, eccentric Lovett is compared to the comic half of a double act – “the Morecambe to Karimloo’s Wise” – and her cabaret instincts make her particularly effective in “By the Sea”. Bedella’s Turpin is played with “terrifying fervour”, while Anthony and Johanna provide the necessary lyrical relief. Brinkworth concludes that Murphy has put Sondheim’s music firmly at the centre of a vibrant revival.

Musical Theatre Review — ★★★★★

Rob Bartley also gives five stars, calling the production “razor-sharp” and praising its “powerfully chilling production values”. Karimloo is described as an “imposing and commanding Todd”, although the critic notes that the role gives him fewer opportunities for the huge vocal fireworks associated with some of his other performances.

The revelation here, however, is Meow Meow. Her performance contains echoes of Angela Lansbury but remains distinctly her own: she extracts enormous comedy from Lovett before switching suddenly from eccentricity to genuine menace. Bartley calls hers a “genuinely brilliant performance”. Jack Gibson’s emotionally affecting “Not While I’m Around” and Julius D’Silva’s scene-stealing Beadle also receive particular praise, while the eight-piece orchestra is credited with producing an unexpectedly “rich and full-bodied sound”.

What’s On Live (★★★★) praises a production whose tension is “utterly gripping” and whose design is “spellbindingly effective”; the audience, it reports, rose immediately at the curtain call.

West End Best Friend (★★★★) admires the “visually arresting and vocally sublime” production while providing one of the few substantial dissenting notes: Karimloo’s Todd could use a stronger emotional descent into mass murder and “greater menace”, while Meow Meow’s upper register occasionally struggles with the score. Even so, it regards the casting and production values as formidable.

Gary Naylor writing for The Arts Desk (*****) proclaims that the “singing is uniformly excellent, obeying Sondheim’s demand for clear diction,” and that John Rigby’s reduction of the score for Leo Munby’s seven-piece orchestra “is both effective and sensitive.” He also praises director Murphy for placing “the storytelling, performances and score front and centre – no video, no hand-held mics and no meta. Seldom can a director have substantiated those oft-stated aims with such success.”

Daz Gale at All That Dazzles (★★★★★) was “gasping for breath” after seeing this “completely flawless” production. After warmly praising all the performers – and Meow Meow in particular – he concludes that “this production… is surely as good as any that have ever gone before, if not better.”

The outlier is Mickey Jo Theatre (★★★), who, while enthusiastic about the performances in "one of the great marriages of score and book", is less convinced of Murphy’s vision. He cites the stripped-back aesthetic and the chamber-scale orchestra as at odds with his expectations for a major revival of such an ambitious and "usually grand piece", especially given the epic size of the Rep stage. He also questions the choice to place the story in what appears to be a Georgian setting, around a century before the expected Victorian era, and laments missed opportunities and inconsistencies between the actions and what's being sung.

"God that's good enough," he concludes wryly.

The production runs at Birmingham Rep⁠ until 15 August 2026. Photos: Manuel Harlan