(Warning: this critique contains spoilers.)
One of the issues which arises from a famous, well-respected actress pioneering a theater role is that performers in subsequent productions might struggle with how to approach the character when making it their own; how faithful should they be to the original before it becomes copying? How far can a performer go from the original interpretation without straying too much from the source material? When deciding to expand upon an aspect of a character or the original performance, which should the performer choose? Landing a leading role in a Stephen Sondheim musical already presents an actress with giant shoes to fill, especially when that character was originally portrayed by a powerhouse like Angela Lansbury, and more so when that role was taken down a much different path by Helena Bonham Carter in a widely-known film adaptation. Annaleigh Ashford had a difficult task ahead of her once cast as Mrs. Lovett in the 2023 revival of Sondheim’s Tony-award-winning musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but turning the character into a sidekick in a musical comedy was a mistake that hurts her performance and the tone of the rest of the show, and both mischaracterizes and simplifies one of Broadway’s most layered and greatest villainesses.
There has not been a major theatrical portrayal of Mrs. Lovett which has not used Angela Lansbury’s original 1979 interpretation as a blueprint in some way. Lansbury presented Mrs. Lovett as a bright, funny, cockney, practical, quick-witted businesswoman who was madly in love with the dark, brooding, self-involved, angry leading man, Sweeney Todd. Theater actresses retain Lansbury’s chirpy nature and comedic edge, which is not inherently wrong, but it seems as if they (along with directors) have come to believe that this is an essential part of the character’s “canon”; however, Lansbury herself said she consciously added more lightness and humor than what was actually in the source text:
Interviewer: Let me interrupt that because that’s [Lovett’s chirpy demeanor] in your performance and has been from the beginning in New York. Is that part of the character, or have you added that?
Lansbury: I think that’s something that I have imbued her with way over and above what was on the printed page.
It’s understandable why the first version of a character would be seen as gospel by performers, directors, and even fans due to her status as the original actress, and composer Stephen Sondheim saying that his writing of the character was influenced by Lansbury’s casting in the role, but this is not the only way to go with Mrs. Lovett. In the next moment in the same interview, Lansbury was asked if Lovett could be played differently:
Interviewer: In other words…She could be played straight as a conniving woman.
Lansbury: Yes, very much so.
This is what Helena Bonham Carter did with her dry, collected, calculating Lovett in Tim Burton’s grim 2007 film adaptation, which feels more like a straightforward horror film than a twisted comedy, despite having its share of chuckles. In an interview about her role in the film, Bonham Carter said, “She was so complex and she could have so many different colors and you could still play it billions of different ways. That’s always the exciting [sic] with a part that’s well written is so many different ideas occur to you.”
Film and theater are different genres, and the art of acting for one medium typically does not work for the other, so this is not to say that Bonham Carter’s pointed looks, quiet smirks, and nonchalance would be suitable on stage for audience members sitting in the back of a theater — it would most likely not — but it’s to point out how far the other way this character can be taken (though Bonham Carter kept Lovett’s humorous wit and obsessive love for Sweeney). Lansbury’s decisions do not need to be a box to trap subsequent performers or constrict their ideas about who this character is, and actresses certainly don’t have to feel the need to make Lovett their own by only going bigger with the loud, comedic aspects of her character. A character this complex has range, and an actress could easily look at the source text and take Lovett down a darker path somewhere in between Lansbury and Bonham Carter, with both enough energy for the stage and comedy that is more twisted than hokey.
Annaleigh Ashford clearly did not go down that path, nor does it seem like she was aware that such a path exists. While there are many possible ways to play this character, not all are suitable for what is essentially a horror film for the stage (as Sondheim described in his book, Finishing the Hat), thus the problem is that when an actress like Ashford believes the only direction to go with Mrs. Lovett is up, and focuses on expanding upon Lansbury’s cockney comedy, it very quickly topples over into absurdity. The best way to describe Ashford’s Mrs. Lovett is an exaggeration of Lansbury’s. There is no nuance to this performance. Lansbury believed it would have been too dark an evening for a theater-going audience to play her completely straight, but Ashford seems to forget that this is, in fact, intended to be an overall dark show. There is hardly a break from Ashford delivering lines with a nasally accent like they are out of a joke book.
When Ashford’s Lovett quickly applied powder to her body to primp herself for a distracted Sweeney after “Worst Pies in London”, I laughed. It was a small, funny gesture that made sense for a woman who just recognized the love of her life. When she began touching him sensually and practically gluing herself to his back during “My Friends” and “Wait”, I grinned. When she did a courtesy to Judge Turpin on the steps of the barber shop wide enough to spread her legs into a split and slowly slide down the stairs, I thought it was funny, if a little much. When Lovett playfully slapped Sweeney’s butt and literally rolled on the floor with laughter during “A Little Priest”, it was a lot much. By the time Ashford was hamming it up to the audience straddling Sweeney’s thighs in “By the Sea”, it was to the point where she could not have possibly gone further without pulling out a red clown nose.
This is what happens when a performer doesn’t know when to stop, and evidently, when a director either has little control of what happens on stage, or doesn’t have a firm grasp on a character, as well. Lansbury was a seasoned character actress by the time she starred in Sweeney, and had enough self-awareness to be wary of going too far. In the same 1981 interview quoted earlier, Lansbury discussed this directly:
Interviewer: Did [director Harold Prince] ever accept your idea of making her a kind of jolly, cockney?
Lansbury: Yes, up to a certain point. He was always afraid I was going to go over the edge.
Interviewer: In making her a clown?
Lansbury: In making her — he didn’t want a caricature, which I certainly didn’t, either. But it’s a very fine line in a piece of material of this sort. And I do, at times, resort to a lot of musical — English musical schtick. I do it in “Have a Little Priest” because I think this is the moment where one can take off, and I think in the musical theater, you have to pick your time to do it. And I think neither Hal nor Steve [Sondheim] took exception to that, nor did they object, as long as I kept it fairly well within certain confines.
Interviewer: The temptation must be to kick it around.
Lansbury: Oh, yeah. You have to be very careful. I could kick it around a lot more, but I don’t want to.
Here lies the crux of the issue with Ashford’s Lovett: she’s a caricature. She’s out of control. She’s a clown. There is a difference between Lansbury deciding to let loose during “A Little Priest” and having Lovett giggle with Sweeney in an intentionally-humorous song, and Ashford acting like a Looney Tunes character. More broadly, there is a difference between Lansbury choosing appropriate moments in the show to be comedic (such as, you know, the moments intended to be so), and Ashford giving the same, almost one-note performance the whole time. When nearly every scene is played this way, there is little room for the actress and character to go and it becomes predictable. Ashford is relentless in her quest for a punchline. Almost every bit of dialogue is delivered tongue-in-cheek, a snarky little quip, to the point where the cannibalistic accomplice of the titular serial killer has very few serious moments. It feels like Lovett is constantly winking to the audience in a way reminiscent of a character on The Office looking into the camera. It’s as if Ashford mistook Sweeney Todd for a musical comedy instead of a musical thriller with shades of macabre humor.
Furthermore, one of the side effects of making a joke out of every other line is that it renders the audience giggly throughout the show, consequently making serious moments seem humorous. The audience I was in practically laughed the whole time during “Johanna (Reprise)”, for example. The initial juxtaposition between the beautiful lyrics and throat-cutting can be amusing, but in recordings of other productions, there isn’t nearly as much laughter from the crowd. A friend who saw the show with me even turned to me and asked, “What are they laughing at? The body is just sliding down the chute. It’s really not that funny.” There has always been a dark edge of humor to the show, and even the overall-serious film adaptation has its dark humor, but if someone had walked by our theater and heard the laughter inside, they might have thought we were watching The Book of Mormon as opposed to a musical about a vengeful serial killer and cannibalism.
Ashford’s constant penchant for diffusing serious moments can even make Sweeney appear less intimidating at times, despite Josh Groban’s brooding and grim demeanor. This applies to Ashford’s frequent manhandling of Groban, as well, which takes the dangerous edge out of Sweeney. There are times in the film adaptation when Lovett physically moves Sweeney around — “Wait” and immediately after “Epiphany” come to mind — but Johnny Depp’s Sweeney is also quick to put Lovett in her place with angry growls and even physical threats, such as when he holds the razor to her throat in “Epiphany.” This gives the impression that Sweeney is a loose canon, someone who can snap and lash out at anyone in a moment’s notice. This is meant to be a dangerous man. You don’t get that same feeling on stage when Mrs. Lovett is treating him like a ragdoll, running her fingers through his hair during “Wait”, and spreading her legs over him in “By the Sea” (more on that in a moment). My friend’s assessment was that it came across as if Mrs. Lovett was harassing a sad, older man, rather than playing the risky game of trying to seduce a murderer who quite literally believes we all deserve to die.
Aside from how Ashford intentionally delivers her lines, there is the unfortunate side effect of her unnatural cockney accent smothering her performance. A cockney accent is difficult for many American performers to pull off without sounding ridiculously fake, and it feels like Ashford is so worried about elongating her vowels in the right way that it overshadows her singing voice. Ashford sounds nasal and whiny as Mrs. Lovett in a way that Angela Lansbury’s clear cockney accent did not, and while this is a chatty character, there are even times when it sounds like Ashford is talking more than singing. Combining this whiny talk-singing with a Looney Tunes delivery makes for a performance that can be quite grating at times, even for the audio-only official soundtrack. Mrs. Lovett’s accent is often written phonetically in the script and lyrics, to be clear, but this is Broadway we’re talking about here; if a choice had to be made between having a more genuine cockney accent that hindered the singing, or a better singing voice with a less extreme accent, I think I speak for most patrons of the American audience in New York City that the latter would have been preferable.
The main issue with this portrayal of Mrs. Lovett, however, is how it damages the character. The number which epitomizes Ashford morphing Mrs. Lovett into a slapstick clown is “By the Sea.” To be fair, this lighthearted song begins with Lovett pressing quick kisses to Sweeney’s cheek in all iterations, and the entire number centers around her delusions of having romantic, seaside domesticity with a serial killer. This is the most intentionally funny song in the entire show, and it was played for visual laughs in the film.
Stage actresses do not have the visual gags from the film and the entire song relies on their energy, so utilizing comedy while performing this piece is fine, as is Mrs. Lovett getting somewhat physical with Sweeney — emphasis on “somewhat.” Ashford does not simply kiss Sweeney’s cheek or rub his shoulders. In the performance I saw, she outright played with his legs, climbed on his lap, hooked her leg over his arm, straddled his thighs, and twerked on him. As the audience practically swallowed their tongues laughing, I only sat there thinking: is this necessary? Where was the director? Why was no one trying to rein in this performance? If this were the only time Ashford was a horny buffoon for Groban’s Sweeney, then perhaps it would have been less egregious, but this was the culmination of this persistent shtick which began in “My Friends.” It felt forced and really old by that point in Act II. Additionally, while I cannot confidently speak for Sondheim, I have good reason to believe this would not have gone over well with him; when Bonham Carter floated the idea of sexualizing Mrs. Lovett more for the film, he quickly shot her down. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling that if Angela Lansbury had started humping Len Cariou or George Hearn in “By the Sea”, it would have crossed the line which director Hal Prince was afraid she’d cross, and drawn criticism from Sondheim.
It isn’t merely about the sex, because it’s not automatically out-of-character for a woman who is less than subtle about her love for Sweeney (and Sondheim and Lansbury believed the lead characters were lovers) to try to seduce him, and instead about coupling the overt sexualization with nonstop wisecracks, winks to the audience, and air-headedness. It almost feels like Mrs. Lovett was replaced with Harley Quinn in this production of Sweeney Todd, to the point where I half-expected the cockney accent chirping “Mr. T!” to switch to an exaggerated New York accent exclaiming, “Mr. J!” This is simply not who the character is, and making Mrs. Lovett come across as a British Harley Quinn can make her seem like little more than…well, like Quinn, a clown, and a ditzy, misunderstood, hopeless romantic one at that.
Here’s why that doesn’t work: Mrs. Lovett is not bumbling or anywhere near misunderstood. She is actively manipulative throughout the entire show. Sondheim described her as “totally amoral” more than once and indeed, everything is merely a means to her ends: giving Sweeney a place to stay, helping him rebuild his barber shop, and hiding his crimes help her business and make her closer to winning his attention and affection, and she initially spares Toby from Sweeney’s bloodlust because she, personally, has a soft spot for him and sees him as a useful assistant. As soon as Toby threatens her livelihood and happiness with Sweeney, she locks him in the bakehouse and attempts to bring Sweeney down there to kill him. In the film and even in Ashford’s portrayal, Lovett tears up and clearly dislikes the thought of killing Toby to protect herself and her desired lover, but she doesn’t hesitate to trap him in the bake house and go running to his would-be murderer. She’s even the one who casually suggests that Sweeney should murder Anthony, a teenager, once he brings Johanna to the barber shop.
Upon a first glance, these actions may not line up with a smiley chatterbox like Mrs. Lovett, but her rambling is intentional. When discussing the lyrics to “Poor Thing” in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim mentioned the manipulative nature of her spiel:
“Mrs. Lovett is chattering away as she did before, but this time with a purpose: she thinks she has recognized Sweeney as Benjamin Barker, her tenant of fifteen years ago, and is driving him into a fury of remembrance. Instead of the meandering of her first song, this one takes on a calculated regularity of rhythm and rhyme that, like Poe’s tell-tale heart, drives Todd to the breaking point.”
It is a mistake to read Mrs. Lovett as an absentminded ditz, and Ashford’s portrayal undermines the severity of her actions and, more importantly, capability of pulling them off. What is more shocking to both the audience and Sweeney, himself, is not her aiding and abetting serial murder, but lying about the fate of his beloved wife, Lucy, from day one. Mrs. Lovett is the bad guy, and that isn’t just my opinion. Later in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim said, “Her garrulousness causes her to seem irritating but harmless, which makes the eventual revelation of her villainy, for she is indeed the true villain of the piece, more surprising.” In an interview alongside Lansbury in 2009, Sondheim said, “I told [Lansbury] what’s fun about the characters is that the one who’s sympathetic is the morose, sullen murderer, while the one who’s good company is the real villain.”
A great line from the stage show (which was cut from the film) is at the end when Sweeney realizes Mrs. Lovett knew Lucy was actually alive the entire time, “From the first moment I walked into your shop, you knew my Lucy lived.” Really reflect upon that: from the moment Mrs. Lovett recognizes Sweeney at the beginning of Act I, a switch flips in her mind and she begins thinking of how she can finally have him all to herself. Think of how quickly she tells him that Lucy (merely) poisoned herself but she tried to help her, and the lines, “You’ve come home…And you’re mine” in “My Friends.” There are several times in the show when she shoos Lucy away from the shop to prevent Sweeney from seeing her, including multiple times in one song alone (“God, That’s Good!”).
No normal person would even think to do this. It could only be someone as deeply conniving and amoral as Mrs. Lovett to have zero qualms or apprehension about lying to someone that their beloved spouse is dead. As misanthropic as Sweeney is from the start of the show, he instantly trusts Mrs. Lovett with knowing his past and murderous aspirations for the future, and she uses that to her full advantage. She knows Sweeney has no one but her in London anymore and could ask no one else about his wife, and tries as much as she can for Lucy to never get anywhere near the barber shop so he would never learn the truth. Sweeney never suspected that Mrs. Lovett would betray him, too.
Once caught, Lovett’s first thought is to lie further that she only lied to spare Sweeney the pain of seeing Lucy disheveled and out of her head.
That is almost immediately undermined by her singing, arguably, the most evil line in the show: “Said she took the poison / She did / Never said that she died” (emphasis mine). Finally, she confesses the real motivation behind her actions: “Yes I lied ’cause I love you! / I’d be twice the wife she was! / I love you! / Could that thing have cared for you like me?”
When the character is portrayed as foolishly as Ashford’s interpretation, it’s difficult to believe Mrs. Lovett would be emotionally and intellectually capable of such cruel deception.
One of the only moments this aspect of the character shines through in Ashford’s performance is, funnily enough, right after “By the Sea.” After being largely ignored throughout her seaside fantasy, Mrs. Lovett tries to convince Sweeney to be with her, and the film expands upon the dialogue in a fantastic scene where she asks if Sweeney even remembers what Lucy looks like. When he can’t, Bonham Carter’s Lovett gently insists that Lucy is gone, Sweeney has to leave the past behind him, and they could have a life together. Bonham Carter’s hushed insistence combined with Depp’s Sweeney actually turning to her and softening for a split second before Anthony rushes in makes for a scene that’s only more chilling and fantastic with the knowledge of the twist at the end.
In the stage show, Lovett asks Sweeney if he loves her and tries to talk him into marriage. Sweeney, clearly not paying attention, mutters that he’ll make the Judge and Beadle pay for what they did to Lucy. All humor leaves Ashford’s Lovett’s expression and voice. She takes Sweeney by the face, looks him in the eye, and slowly yet sternly says, “Listen to me: your Lucy’s gone. Poor thing. It’s your Nellie now” (for those unaware: Nellie is Lovett’s first name).
It was one of the only points in the show where it felt like Mrs. Lovett’s manipulative nature came through, and it was a great moment — if only it didn’t come mere minutes after Ashford was twerking in the lap of Groban’s Sweeney. It felt like a different character was on stage at that moment, and not in the sense that we finally saw this character’s true colors, as what happens at the very end of the musical, but more like the actress’ work in this one scene didn’t match her work for the rest of the role. It would have done the character a service if Ashford leaned into this side of Lovett more often. As mentioned previously, a performance as restrained and reliant on facial expressions as Bonham Carter’s was would not work in theater, but certainly elements of her calculating demeanor could be applied. As demonstrated by the scene after “By the Sea” mentioned above, Lovett can actively toy with Sweeney’s mind to a sickening degree, and that version of the character is not only much more layered and compelling than British Harley Quinn, but fits the tone of this twisted tale much better. A twist ending should be surprising, but not feel like it comes out of nowhere because the audience thought they were watching an edgy comedy due to one actress monopolizing the stage with fourth wall breaks, sit-com style deliveries, and an abundance of physical comedy.
A part of me doesn’t enjoy writing this, because I readily admit that I could never have the energy or talent to perform a show live night after night, and Annaleigh Ashford is not without talent. She can obviously sing when the vowels in each note aren’t being obscured by the cockney accent, knows how to work a crowd, and clearly knows how to do comedy well. It’s that her lack of restraint is a prime example of what happens when Hal Prince’s fear of making Mrs. Lovett into a caricature comes true. There is a reason why he only allowed Lansbury to make her jolly only up to a certain point, and that reason is Mrs. Lovett stopping “A Little Priest” dead in its tracks to roll around on the floor in a fit of laughter and turning a killer into her boy toy in “By the Sea.” The reason is the tone of the last 15 minutes of the show feeling like a stark contrast to the rest of the musical because the leading woman turned it into a musical comedy.
The thing is that I know for a fact that Mrs. Lovett could still be very funny on stage without turning into British Harley Quinn — because I watched Ashford’s understudy do it. The day before I was set to see this revival of Sweeney again on August 26th, 2023, I received an email informing me that Ashford would not be performing that day, and I later found out that she was recovering from COVID. I decided against the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre’s offer for a refund and went to see the show anyway with Groban as Sweeney and Jeanna de Waal as Mrs. Lovett. De Waal was funny, attempted a cockney accent which did not obscure her voice, and was lively enough for the stage without going too far. She was charming, yet layered. My family members who accompanied me on my second trip (and were originally not huge fans of Lansbury’s original portrayal) were wowed by her performance.
In the interest of total fairness, de Waal also did the courtesy down the stairs, fell to the floor in laughter during “A Little Priest”, and got very physical with Sweeney during “By the Sea”, perhaps indicating that these were decisions by the director, or perhaps de Waal did not want to stray too far from Ashford’s interpretation and have Groban play against a very different female lead. (Edit: de Waal confirmed on Instagram that she intentionally channeled Ashford’s interpretation in her performance.) For whatever the reason, these elements were in both actress’ performances. There are two reasons why these still came across as less forced when de Waal did them: this part of her character wasn’t constantly at level 10 throughout the show, making the comedic moments hit harder, and her delivery of these moments was tamer in general (although I would be lying if I said I didn’t still wish these parts had been toned down a bit).
There was a buildup to de Waal’s performance which was absent in Ashford’s Lovett; the latter was already embracing Sweeney from behind during “My Friends”, the day Lovett was reunited with Sweeney again after 15 years, but de Waal’s Lovett didn’t touch him during that number. She stared at him with unabashed desire and awe, and held out her hands towards him with the clear urge to touch him, but she held back. While she began to touch him during “Wait”, she was not practically giving him a scalp massage by the end of the number the way Ashford was, and it makes sense for Lovett to begin to get more physical with Sweeney during that song, which is meant to serve almost as a lullaby to his impatient, murderous thoughts. It worked even better for de Waal to get comfortable with touching Groban’s Sweeney during “A Little Priest” because that’s the number where Mrs. Lovett finally, triumphantly earns his attention and praise. There was a fantastic moment at the end of the song when Sweeney grasped Mrs. Lovett’s face, walked her backwards, and sang, “Have charity towards the world, my pet.” The look on de Waal’s face was of pure desperation and bliss at receiving Sweeney’s affection, which drives home just how dedicated the character is to winning him over — and that kind of nuance in a performance makes it believable when you realize just how far Mrs. Lovett is willing to go to hoard Sweeney all to herself. It’s a shame that this depth seldom appeared in Ashford’s portrayal (and for the record, I sat close enough to the stage for both performances to be able to see both actress’ faces clearly, so it isn’t as if I couldn’t see Ashford’s face from nosebleed seats).
Maybe I should be a little more understanding of Ashford’s choices, though, because the audience I was in truly ate up her performance. If I had an audience responding so readily to what I did on stage, I might be persuaded to keep it up and go further, too. But I can only think back to Lansbury knowing full well that she could have done the same thing, yet purposefully keeping herself in check. Perhaps some actresses have the experience and skill to value characterization above audience reaction more than others.
(Quick note: apologies for using this many GIFs and photos from the film and not stage versions, but that version simply has the most GIFs and photos available.)
