In a sentenceSweeney Todd in a prison, and the professionals are the ones who can’t take direction
Victoria (Jessica Hynes, credited as Jessica Stevenson) runs a small touring opera company that has agreed to stage Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd inside a men’s prison, with inmates taking parts alongside her professionals. Her Mrs Lovett is Jayney (Samantha Spiro), loud, loyal and unbothered by the company she is keeping; Sydney (Karl Johnson) and Dennis (Dudley Sutton) are the old hands who have seen worse digs than this. Among the prisoners, Walter (Ian Burfield), serving life, is cast as the barber, and Kevin (Shaun Dingwall) is the one Victoria finds herself watching. The first act is auditions in a gymnasium, rehearsals under strip lights, officers who would rather the whole thing went away, and a company arguing about money while teaching men who have never sung a note a score with no easy numbers in it.
Francesca Joseph’s comedy sends a hard-up opera company into a prison to stage Sweeney Todd with the inmates. It is warm, well acted and too soft to convince, and it lands properly only in its last twenty minutes.
Francesca Joseph’s film puts a travelling opera company inside a prison to stage Sweeney Todd, and most of what is good about it comes from taking that idea seriously. It is lively, often funny and short, and it is thin in the places a film like this needs to be solid. It does not outstay its welcome, and at the close it earns something it has not quite worked for.
Jessica Hynes, credited as Jessica Stevenson, plays Victoria as a woman who has chosen a hard way to make a living and is beginning to notice. She directs with a clipboard and a fixed smile, and Hynes lets the smile slip at well-judged moments. Samantha Spiro’s Jayney, the company’s Mrs Lovett, is the film’s engine: a belter with a filthy laugh who treats the prisoners as colleagues, and who sings the pie-shop number so well we forgot for a verse where the film was set. Karl Johnson’s Sydney and Dudley Sutton’s Dennis supply the old-trouper grumbling, and both can land a dry line.
Then the prisoners. Ian Burfield plays Walter, serving life and cast as the barber, and he is the film’s quiet centre. He barely speaks early on, learns the part faster than anyone expects, and sings it in an untrained voice that does not need training. Shaun Dingwall’s Kevin is the inmate Victoria cannot stop looking at, and the script by Paul Abbott and Joseph handles that attraction with more tact than we feared. David Oyelowo has a handful of scenes as Charlie and is good in all of them. Kulvinder Ghir’s Rajiv has less to do than he deserves.
Gerry Floyd shoots the prison in the flat, even light it has, strip-lit corridors and a rehearsal room with high windows, and keeps the camera hand-held and close. John Stevenson’s design is almost all found: a gymnasium, a stage of trestles and painted flats, and Jonathan Fensom’s battered Victorian frocks hung on a rail against breeze-block. Dan Jones’s music has the sense to stay out of Sondheim’s way, a few cues under the corridors and nothing during the numbers. St. John O’Rorke cuts the rehearsals briskly, too briskly: the film jumps from shambles to competent run-through without showing us the week between.
The trouble is tone. Abbott and Joseph want a backstage farce, a prison drama and a romance, and they switch between them at the ends of scenes rather than inside them. A joke about a prop razor is followed by an officer reminding everyone that these men have killed people, and neither moment changes the other. The prison itself is oddly soft: nobody in uniform minds the company much, no inmate seems dangerous for longer than a scene, and the one crisis that threatens the show is over before it registers. We never believed anyone was at risk, and a film about putting a murderer on stage ought to make us.
And yet. The last stretch, when the company performs for an audience of prisoners and a few invited outsiders, caught us properly. We had spent an hour mildly amused, and then Burfield stood under the lights and sang, and the audience on screen went still, and so did we. The film does not suddenly become well made. But the thing it has been promising, men who are not free briefly looking as if they are, turns out to have been worth waiting for. We will not say how the evening ends.
Against the small British genre it belongs to, where a community puts on a show and finds itself, this is a modest entry: less sharp than Brassed Off, less sure of itself than Topsy-Turvy, kinder than either. Joseph is good with actors and less certain where to put the camera. The reviews so far have been lukewarm, and we are not far from them.
It reached British cinemas on 10 December 2002 and runs 90 minutes. See it with someone who likes Sondheim and can forgive a film for being nicer than its subject. If the first hour feels slight, stay; the last twenty minutes are the reason it was made.
The review's verdict is unavailable because the article body is behind a paywall. Its praise or criticism cannot be determined from the visible text.
Read the full review →The critic finds it mildly amusing but tonally uneven, with its emotional impact arriving only near the end. The ensemble and vocal performances of Sondheim’s score are singled out for praise, especially Samantha Spiro and Ian Burfield.
Read the full review →Malcolm finds the film lively and warm, but ultimately lacking credibility and cinematic style. He praises the cast and Joseph’s handling of actors, while saying the film never quite has enough bite.
Read the full review →
Caesar Must Die · not reviewed yetReal inmates rehearse Julius Caesar in a Roman prison; the Tavianis blur the lines properly.
Quartet · not reviewed yetRetired opera singers put on a gala in a care home; the same warmth, a softer setting.
Sing SingA prison theatre programme played largely by its own alumni; tougher and more honest.
Topsy-TurvyMike Leigh on Gilbert and Sullivan; the best film about rehearsal rooms we know.
Brassed OffA colliery band plays on while the pit closes; the same warmth with sharper teeth.
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