Stephen Sondheim succeeded Richard Wagner on Longborough’s stage last weekend. The focus was still on death and destruction, though — if that seen in Sweeney Todd was on a slightly more modest scale than Götterdämmerung’s. This was the chance for Longborough Festival Opera’s Young Artists to show their talent, and they rose brilliantly to the challenge. Under musical director Richard Taggart and director Maria Jagusz, this well-planned show was disfigured by not a single dud performance among the leading roles, and every member of the 14-strong ensemble shone too.

Sweeney Todd is so firm a fixture in the musical repertoire that it seems scarcely possible that it was written by Sondheim — both words and music — as recently as 1979. The wit of his lyrics and catchiness of his tunes combine to make the best of a sensational story which, while some claim it to be based on fact, actually comes from a Victorian ‘penny dreadful’.

The excellent Ben Maggs, oozing bags of stage personality, took a suitably commanding part in proceedings in the role of Sweeney. He proved as adept at revealing the character’s tender regard for his daughter Johanna (Amy Cate Walsh) as in showing his furious contempt for the corrupt Judge Turpin (James Ward) who stole her from him. Transforming himself into the Demon Barber of Fleet Street for the purpose of revenge on the judge and sidekick Beadle Bamford (Eleias Moore Roberts), he then slips almost by accident into a rather more extensive campaign of slaughter. How convenient, indeed, is the serendipitous discovery that Mrs Lovett (Megan Yates), with her pie shop beneath his salon, is eager to take the meat he plentifully supplies.

Top-class performances included those of William Morgan as Johanna’s eager swain Anthony Hope and Daniel Holley as Mrs Lovett’s young gofer Tobias, first seen assisting in the richly comic sales pitch of Sweeney’s soon-to-be-eliminated rival with the clippers, Adolfo Pirelli, hilariously portrayed by Colin Bryce.