2025Edfringe：Lovett

★★★★★

Before the actor enters, first enters a long, solemn piece of mass music. It is a dark cellar. We descend the stairs and take our seats, only to see a faint light revealing a desk—and on it, a silver chalice glimmering in the gloom. Then the actor appears.

She begins with a speech on the art of butchery—the breaking down of carcasses. As she speaks, she jokes about her own awkwardness. Then, the topic shifts smoothly from butchery to her mother, Helen—an exquisite and sweet French woman adored by all. Mother is the first key word of the play.

In the original Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett dismembers bodies out of a mad love for the murderous barber. But here, the play offers a different explanation: it is not for the love of a man, but for the love of her mother—and hatred towards men who wield power to control.

Her mother, portrayed with a French accent to distinguish her from the daughter (all characters are played by the same actor in this one-woman show), is beautiful and graceful. However, a local priest seduces and sexually abuses her in the church while Lovett, still a child, plays in the next room. From that shame and rage, a monster is born inside Lovett—one that longs to tear manipulative men to pieces.

Social class forms the second thread of the story. Growing up on the South bank of the river—"where God would never go"—Mrs Lovett feels like a seed scattered into shadow (“some seeds fall in the sun, others into darkness”). God, she says, lives in the North bank, where the church stands. Yet all the money spent in South London—in brothels, casinos, goose houses—secretly flows back to the North. She calls herself a "goose," and speaks of her long-time friend Irene, a hooker and pickpocket who lost an eye after being caught. To portray Irene, the actor simply closes one eye—a minimal yet effective transformation.

Irene has no wish for love, only for bread. In one scene, Eleanor (Mrs. Lovett before marriage) muses that everyone’s body is a coin, and hers has yet to be flipped. Irene laughs and urges her to have sex, reminding her that she’s not getting any younger.

Then comes the third keyword: the body. The body in the world where Eleanor lives, is associated with the idea of dissection, to being sold in parts. The connection forms long before she meets Irene who trades her body for food. As a child, Eleanor is taken by her father to see a dying whale that’s about to be "fabricated" into pieces. Her father mimics the whale’s cries—long, deep, mournful sounds. From that moment, she begins to mimic animals, especially the hoarse howling of street dogs, which she identifies with most.

Then enters Sweeney Todd—unexpectedly, as if he should never have crossed Eleanor’s path. But he does, appointed as a charity hairdresser to help the girls in the brothel rid themselves of lice. His touch on her hair is the first moment she experiences intimacy, a release of desire that was never before connected to anything positive. Before him, desire was insult or survival—Erwin, or her mother’s shame. But with Todd, she finds a companion in vengeance. He gives her permission to feel her rage and transform it into action.

Then comes “Mr. Lovett,” the man who eventually leaves her widowed. He could move between social classes with ease and once told her: “Church isn’t in the North, it’s where you pray.” This line brings revelation. The butcher’s table in the dim kitchen suddenly becomes something else—a dark altar. Eleanor prays before she breaks down each carcass. Once the heart stops beating, it’s no longer a life, but meat. Steam constantly rises from the corner—sometimes it’s the fog of 19th-century London, sometimes the heat from her pie shop. Every object, every gesture, plays more than one role in this sparsely designed stage.

The actor is remarkable. She carries us through her narrative with ease, seamlessly shifting between characters and delivering lines that would sound too literary in lesser hands. For example, when she says, “Love is a wave that moves you,” she lets the line fall to the floor, then moves—dances—spins around the room, turning poetry into movement that speaks more than words.

In a one-woman show, the theme of merging identities becomes vivid: Eleanor, her mother, the hooker, the man who walks between classes, the vengeful barber, the street dogs waiting for scraps, the little girl crying for the whale, and the whale itself.

“I was hoping it was me who got dissected,” Eleanor finally says it loud.