By: Keiran Potter
As blood-soaked and cutting as a butcher’s blade…
Lovett tells the origin story of the infamous Mrs. Lovett, best known from the tale of Sweeney Todd, first seen in Penny Dreadfuls, later on the Broadway stage, and eventually in Tim Burton’s Hollywood adaptation.
Lucy Roslyn pens and performs, and her iteration on page and stage stands apart from its predecessors. This one-hand play avoids the typical manic and unhinged cockney caricature and opts for something quieter, without skimping on the humour or menace that Lovett lovers have come to expect.
The staging is noticeably sparse, a counter, a knife, a cup of water.
It’s a far throw from the cobbles, trap doors and barber chairs of a Broadway stage, but it is immediately apparent that this simple butcher’s workbench is Lovett’s perfect soapbox.
Though she is not utterly alone! With the help of an immaculate sound scape of crowing birds, barking strays and the impeccable direction of Jamie Firth, Roslyn paints a picture of a Victorian London split in two.
North of the river live the gentlemen, ladies, vicars, barbers and butchers, where the light of God seemingly shines. South of the river lie those burdened with poverty. A place where God never steps foot.
Roslyn’s Eleanor/ Mrs. Lovett has a foot on either side of the river and in doing so allows the audience to question the true difference between the two.
The dialogue delivers Lovett’s history in tender, prayer-like morsels, revealing how upbringing and loss shaped her view of the world and those seemingly exempt from God’s judgement.
Lucy Roslyn, as the sole performer of Lovett, is a true shapeshifter. With a wink of her right eye, or a jolt in her posture, she is unmistakably transformed. She becomes Eleanor’s mother Helena, the woman who instilled in her a sense of worth, her late husband, the man who taught her her craft. Then who can forget Irene? A one eyed prostitute, that reminds Eleanor, and the audience, what her life was predestined to be, had she not had the bravery to intervene.
Though often played for laughs, the comic but unsettling Irene perfectly seasons what could otherwise be quite a dark and unrelenting 60-minute trek to the south side of the river.
Not only do these character switches move along the plot nicely, they offer an insight into the fractured psyche of Eleanor and the wounds these characters have left her with. The result is a performance that is as much about inheritance and legacy as it is about survival.
Roslyn even addresses this as part of a powerful opening monologue in which she draws a line between animal and meat, and later between man and beast.
The monologue first appears grotesque, before revealing itself as a meditation on flesh, faith and value. The recurring metaphor of meat becomes a tool to interrogate how society grades the worth of its bodies, some cuts considered prime, others dismissed as scraps.
The sentiment perfectly reflects how human lives are often weighed, especially in today’s socio-political climate. It forces the audience to digest who is granted ‘prime’ status and who is cast aside as nothing more than offal.
Lovett proceeds to mischievously complicate this hierarchy. Mrs. Lovett reminds us that ‘trimmings’ can hold the richest flavour, suggesting that those pushed to society’s margins carry a depth earned through lived experience and endurance.
By rendering ALL bodies, no matter their status, as both sacred and consumable Lovett collapses the distance between the altar and the abattoir in a way that only a true artist could.
You might even find yourself leaving the theatre quoting the words of Sondheim himself…
‘God, that’s Good!’.