Playing Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd on Broadway was the most terrifying experience of Emma Thompson's life, she revealed on Tuesday, so the actor's decision to reprise the role and return to the London stage for the first time in 25 years might seem a little surprising.
She hopes to cope better this time. "As in no nausea, no actual nausea," she said. "If I can manage the fear without the nausea, I'll be really happy."
It is 25 years since Thompson appeared on the London stage, and 30 years since she starred in the feelgood musical Me and My Girl – a run which, she said, contributed to a bout of clinical depression. Now Thompson is to star as London's worst piemaker alongside bass baritone Bryn Terfel in 13 semi-staged performances of the musical in March next year, English National Opera (ENO) has announced.
The performances at London's largest theatre, the Coliseum, are a reprise of a critically acclaimed five night run in New York earlier this year and represent the first fruits of a new commercial partnership between ENO and the West End producers Michael Grade and Michael Linnit. Despite Thompson never having been so frightened – "ever" – she said it had been "magical" to be back on stage. "It made me weep … the chance to do it again was like a dream coming true because it was coming to an end [in New York] and it was terrible to think of it ending."
The New York Times gave both the show and Thompson a rapturous review. "Could she sing? Could she ever; the performance was by virtually all measures a triumphant one," its reviewer wrote. "Scuttling around the stage with a variety of silly walks, jabbering in a perfect cockney accent and singing with impressive range and assurance (some more careful, less characterful stretches in her higher range notwithstanding), she put a lively personal stamp on the role."
Thompson last took the stage in London in 1989, starring alongside her then husband Kenneth Branagh in Look Back in Anger, directed by Judi Dench.
She said having children was one of main reasons for her not having done more stage work. "My mum [actor Phyllida Law] worked in the theatre when we were little and … that's hard, because you're leaving your children just as they come home from school. The timings of it, films sometimes seemed to me to fit motherhood slightly better." Having said that, Thompson said she had not made a conscious decision to avoid the theatre. "It's just what comes along … it's just what happens at the time."
Thompson is best known for her film work, both acting and writing, but one of her earliest successes was in Me and My Girl in the West End. It was a relentlessly feelgood show which took its toll, she recalled. "I did that for 15 months and became clinically depressed … I think it was the effect of having to be so cheerful." Sweeney Todd was first performed in 1979 and is probably Sondheim's most operatic work. Thompson said she knew it well, that it was a "revolutionary piece about poverty and deprivation with great music and amazing words", but was also "very difficult and fantastically complex".
It was a challenge – it took her six months to learn the part – but one she relished. "You've got to keep doing different things, flinging yourself and leaping into the dark otherwise you get a bit samey and people get bored," she said.
Terfel said Thompson's New York performances were mesmerising. "Yes Sweeney Todd is musical theatre but it is also unquestionably operatic," he said. "I defy anybody to sing Sweeney's epiphany without thinking that it is a very difficult aria, song, whatever you want to call it, to perform."
It was during the New York run that ENO's artistic director John Berry asked Thompson and Terfel if they would reprise their roles in London.
The performances at the Coliseum – with 2,359 seats, it is a difficult theatre to fill – would not be happening without the new partnership with the GradeLinnit company which aims to bring money, expertise and contacts to the ENO. Linnit said the aim was to both make sure the opera company had no financial risk while maximising ENO's share of the profit.
Although Sweeney Todd will be a one-off, the longer term aim is for the ENO to stage fully-produced musicals which will transfer in to West End theatres, thus providing valuable income for a company which was one of the biggest losers in the last Arts Council England funding round, seeing its money cut by £5m to £12.4m.
The London shows of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Musical Thriller, will see the ENO orchestra, conducted by David Charles Abell, appear on stage with the cast. Tickets will cost £10-£125 with 300 seats available at £10 for every performance.
Sondheim, 84, who wrote Sweeney Todd in 1979, is expected at the opening on 30 March although Thompson might hope for slightly less direct encouragement than he gave her in New York. "He said: 'Don't fuck it up.'"
