At Laura’s wedding to the caddish Sir Perceval insipid Oliver Darley there’s a creepily atonal setting of The Holly and the

At Laura’s wedding to the caddish Sir Perceval (insipid Oliver Darley), there’s a creepily atonal setting of “The Holly and the Ivy” while images of the church reel round. But we’re a long way here from the brilliance of Sondheim’s Victorian musical Sweeney Todd. In this version, the fateful meeting with the eponymous woman is shifted from London to a misty Cumberland railway station where the hero Walter Hartwright (Martin Crewes) is stranded waiting for transport. Lloyd Webber’s music and Trevor Nunn’s fluent production, with its dizzying whirl of video projections, impart an authentic spookiness to the encounter. The mouth of the tunnel looms towards us and disgorges the Woman (Angela Christian). He must mean the precious secret, which has eluded him lately, of writing a mega-smash hit. The pouting, the pert little walk, the effortless shifting between languages, the vulgarity Salieri so loathes, it’s all there.

“It seemed to me that I had heard the voice of God, and it was the voice of an obscene child.” Catch this brilliant obscenity if you can To 25 September (01332 363275). James’s Joseph doesn’t pastiche Milos Forman’s film: those gorgeous lines, “Well, that’s it, then,” or, “Too many notes,” have a buoyant tang. The court clones – Michael Kirk’s strutting Orsini-Rosenberg, Robin Bowerman’s van Swieten, Graeme Eton’s von Strack – could yet hone their individual Viennese foibles further. The folding-in of the music by the sound-engineer Paul Delaney – Il Seraglio’s coloratura, the double violin-viola concerto, Figaro Act by Act – is as superb as the evocative lighting changes, the seamless, sure, original direction, Kit Lane’s subtle rear-projections (not a technical foot put wrong) and Jon Nicholls’s finely understated linking score, with nasty mocking flute motif for the mischievously amplified whispering Harpies.And then there was Ewing’s Mozart – a surefire hit – paired with Katherine Manners’s Constanze (their rows-reconciliations are worthy of Arthur Miller), and actually – like Salieri – playing the piano on stage, with staggering impact. They and the court seem ever-present in Rosie Alabaster’s flexible library setting, deafly perusing while Salieri is the lurid voyeur. “There was the Magic Flute, there beside me,” he laments, eyeing Paul Ewing’s quivering lips and salivating tongue amid “the stink of sweat and sausage” at the Schikaneder premiere. Sucking up to Joseph II (Christopher James, in the Jeffrey Jones role), seducing Constanze with “nipples of Venus” (brandied Roman chestnuts), spooning Lombardy mascarpone, or pursing and wincing as Ewing pre-empts “La ci darem” (Don Giovanni) and “batti, batti” with “The girl who doesn’t love me can lick my arse”, Forsyth plays his audience like the very squeeze-box to which he likens the magical bassoon and oboe-led opening of the “child’s” B-flat Serenade.Forsyth’s tour de force is abetted by Maxine Fone and Philippa Waller as two hovering, feline “Venticelli”, “my little wings”, personifications of rumour omitted from the Forman-Shaffer film script: waspish news-bringers, cavorting Ariels, and Aeschylean Harpies-cum-Angels of Death and budding stars.

In their new Amadeus, this talented ensemble excels beyond belief. The production would disgrace neither the National nor the RSC, as it calls to mind that Wagnerian word, Gesamtkunstwerk – “total” theatre, the marriage of acting skill, technicals, music and direction that emulates Greek theatre.
When, amid Salieri’s “mediocre” dying curses, Charles Balfour’s lighting serves up a pendant Christ (Jay Reynolds), the whole stage colours like a Renaissance painting, a visual transformation from the subtle grey arches of the composer’s idealistic, doomed initial pact with a boyhood Jesus. With his productions of Sweeney Todd and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the director Stephen Edwards revealed the phenomenal depth of talent at Derby Playhouse. Tightly scripted and well acted, Quuup is a delightful bit of whimsy – a simple story with a big heart To Friday (020-7369 1761). I’m not convinced this exercise is absolutely necessary and would have preferred more musical numbers, but the disruption doesn’t adversely affect the enjoyment of the show.Quuup has already lengthened since Edinburgh, paying more attention to Edith’s sexual experiences in Quuup and Anthony’s revelations about the frogs, but there is still scope for further development of the characters and, hopefully, more musical numbers. Unfortunately for Edith, her new husband is less forthcoming in fulfilling the second part of the numerous double-entendres that pack the show. The mix of sexual tension and Boys Own silliness makes for a fun 1920s romp framed by Larner’s witty narration (“shadows spread like margarine across the endless crumpet of landscape”), songs and bit parts.Larner’s charges are by no means upstaged as he leads them through “days of dense mime”.