The NZ Opera performance of Sweeney Todd offered a huge contrast to the previous opera in the season, which was The Magic Flute; no movement from darkness to light and enlightenment in Sondheim’s dark vision. Just survival or not in a squalid and rackety London.

Roger Kirk’s flexible sets and essentially monochrome costumes (dark and lighter greys, with splashes of red)  allowed the action as directed by Stuart Maunder to move smoothly from barber’s shop to asylum to street. The ensemble should really be all listed individually, as they peopled those sets with a wide variety of individuals, whether eating pies with gusto, watching duelling barbers or as patients at a lunatic asylum. Lights flashed and whistles shrilled as Sweeney Todd’s victims slid from his red barber’s chair down the chute to Mrs Lovett’s pie shop. The last few minutes of each Graham Norton Show may not appear quite as funny in future.

There really wasn’t a weak link on stage. The forces of good as embodied by Amelia Barry as Joanna and James Benjamin Rodgers’ as Antony were strongly characterised and cleanly and purely sung, offering a necessary contrast to those arrayed against them. “Green finch and Linnet bird” was exquisite, offering us a glimpse of Johanna’s captivity, her possible freedom, and the casual cruelty of her “jailors”. Phillip Rhodes’ rich baritone portrayed a strong Judge Turpin, but one  where the inner corruption and weakness were visible. His partner in crime, Beadle Bamford, was vividly played and sung by Andrew Glover as a slimy enforcer.

The protagonists were Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Antoinette Halloran. He is of course a virile and dominating stage presence with a rich baritone voice and clearly showed us the steps by which his vengeance was planned and executed, losing all humanity in the process. Antoinette Halloran, so memorable as Madama Butterfly, was a slutty and sexy Mrs Lovett, prepared to do anything to ensure that she is one of the ones who get to eat, rather than the ones who get eaten, but with a genuine love for Sweeney. I did wonder if these two powerful voices were a bit over-amplified – it was noticeable that when Halloran had a microphone malfunction during the seaside duet, that her natural voice rang clearly into the auditorium with clean diction and projection. Rhodes and Halloran performed the pie duet with appropriately malevolent gusto.

Of the remainder of the cast Helen Medlyn should be mentioned as the Beggar Woman (has she ever been on a stage that she doesn’t own?) and Joel Granger as Tobias Ragg, who took full advantage of one of the score’s rare moments of repose with a tender and gentle delivery of “Not while I’m around”.

Banjamin Northey led the reduced forces from the Auckland Philharmonia in a vigorous rendition of the score that allowed the moments of operatic expansion – Todd and the judge’s duet “pretty Women”, the marvellous “Johanna- quartet” at the start of Act 2- to allow moments of respite in all the action.

So, is Sweeney Todd a Broadway musical? Or a modern opera? I wouldn’t waste time worrying about that. Just get to the Civic Theatre and experience one of the most involving and exciting works of anything created for the theatre at the end of the 20th century.