In choosing this unusual theatrical device, Jonathan Kent, the director, is reinforcing the play's reputation as every gardener's favourite Shakespeare.

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Directed by Jonathan Kent, Sweeney Todd transferred to London in March after a successful run at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2011.

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He also read out a message from Staunton, in which the actress said she was "totally indebted to the wonderful Jonathan Kent for his superb direction".

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The prize for best musical went to Sweeney Todd, directed by Jonathan Kent and starring Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, which transferred from the Chichester Festival to the West End.

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Jonathan Kent says research has linked growing commercial pressures on children to higher rates of depression, lower self-esteem and to mental health problems but that it is very difficult to prove such a link.

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Meanwhile, Jonathan Kent's sometimes imaginative, sometimes annoying new production for the English National Opera is set nowhere in particular: the whole of Act I takes place in the she's-read-too-many-storybooks mind of Senta as a young girl.

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But Jonathan Absalom, who is a Kent supply teacher, said he did not think the government had provided any evidence of the affordability of the pension scheme.

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