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“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd…”
I’ve been a fan of Broadway musicals for a long, long time, but it was only recently that I discovered the genius of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. I’d heard of it, of course—you can’t be a Broadway fan and not know about this weird, creepy, dark musical about the barber who slits the throats of his customers and bakes the corpses into meat pies. Unfortunately (for me), that was all I knew about the show, and I'd steered clear of it for ages.
But a few months ago, I got some of the music from an online acquaintance—and immediately was hooked. There’s so much more to the story of Sweeney Todd than I’d ever realized, and the music and lyrics are amazing…Sondheim is an accomplished composer, but this is arguably his best work.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a London barber named Benjamin Barker. In happier times, he’d had a successful business, a beautiful wife, and a baby daughter named Johanna. Unfortunately, two other men with a lot of power—Judge Turpin and his Beadle—had lusted after Barker’s wife. To remove her husband from the picture, they’d arrested Barker on a trumped-up charge and deported him. Fifteen years later, Barker escaped, changed his name to Sweeney Todd, and returned to London, hoping to reunite with his wife and child.
That’s where our story begins. When Sweeney returns to his home and barber shop on Fleet Street, he meets Mrs. Lovett—a slightly dotty woman who owns the pie shop downstairs. She remembers him, and after talking for a few minutes, she reveals the fate of his wife, Lucy, and daughter. After Barker was arrested, Judge Turpin invited Lucy to a masked ball, got her drunk, and publicly raped her. Lucy subsequently poisoned herself, and Judge Turpin adopted Johanna as his ward. Incensed and heartbroken, Sweeney swears to get his revenge. He soon gets his chance to kill the Judge, but when he doesn’t act quickly enough, he lets the opportunity slip through his fingers.
Losing his chance to kill the Judge pushes Sweeney’s already questionable sanity over the edge. He swears he'll get the Judge eventually, but in the meantime, he'll slaughter all of the customers who come into his barbershop. Mrs. Lovett, whose business has been struggling, suggests a practical method of disposing of the bodies—making them into meat pies.
I’ve often said that a show so dark and creepy has no right to be as enjoyable as it is. But it has so many incredibly comic moments: “A Little Priest” (a song chock-full of witty plays-on-words) is one of the most delightful musical numbers I’ve seen in any show. But it’s not all laughter…Sweeney Todd has the rare ability to turn on a dime and go from raucous to frightening to heart-wrenchingly sad. And the musical score is absolutely amazing.
This DVD is a recorded version of the 1982 touring cast, starring George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. Lansbury actually created the role of Mrs. Lovett on Broadway, and she’s an absolute delight to watch. George Hearn is appropriately terrifying as Sweeney, but you can definitely feel his pain and need for vengeance. He also has a gorgeous baritone voice, and his rendition of “Epiphany” is one of those rare stage moments that will stay with you for months after you see it. The rest of the cast is great, but Hearn and Lansbury’s performances are the biggest reasons to buy this DVD.
The DVD itself isn’t the best quality—the lighting isn’t the greatest, the sound mix definitely leaves something to be desired, and there are no special features. But the performances are unbeatable, and it’s the only fully-staged version of the musical available on DVD. I highly recommend checking it out.
Performance Quality: A
DVD Quality: B-
Total: B+
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