In polling by the Pew Research Center in November 2008, fully half the respondents thought the two parties would cooperate more in the coming year, versus only 36 percent who thought the climate would grow more adversarial.

At its most basic, this is thunderingly enjoyable Victorian melodrama. But as always in Sondheim, there is a marvellous intelligence and wit at work.

[…] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.

What widdershins of tread / Will now uncache the haunted gold, the buried heart, / From secret mould?