Stupendous. The Welsh National Opera's staging of Sweeney Todd at Southampton's Mayflower Theatre is a blood- soaked, pie-filled, razor-sharp success of a show.

Although significantly different in its staging to the recent successful outing of Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics with Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, this WNO production doesn't fail to live up to expectations.

A huge WNO cast ensures the musical numbers are set against an immense vocal background, the brilliantly choreographed chorus ever present as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street sets about his grisly trade.

David Arnsperger is superbly brooding as the vengeful barber who comes to see just about every customer to his bright red chair as easy meat. His pairing with Janis Kelly as the resourceful pie shop owner Mrs Lovett is inspired. Their dance macabre duet concerning which profession would make the best pie filling ingredient is a show stopper.

Young lovers Anthony and Johanna are played wonderfully by Jamie Muscato and Soraya Mafi, their lilting duets a delight.

Favourite among the young audience, many who may have been drawn by the recent film starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, was George Ure who gave a stand out performance as urchin Tobia Ragg.

Daily Echo:

Tremendous applause too for the orchestra conducted by James Holmes ensuring Sondheim's glorious score never faltered throughout.

Director James Brining ensures the pace never lets up, from the imaginative opening scenes set in a lunatic asylum to the gloriously bloody mechanism Todd uses to dispatch his victims to the pie ovens in the bakery bowels below.

A gruesome, tasty delight.

Sweeney Todd runs until Saturday (October 17). See it and you may never trust your barber again.