Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Quarantined

* This week’s quarantined show is rated R. Show contains adult themes including sexual and physical violence.

Need to Know

About the Composer

Stephen Sondheim, born in 1930, is one of the greatest composer and lyricist of American Musical Theater during the 20th century. Critically acclaimed, he wrote and collaborated on some of the greatest musicals and operettas, including West Side Story (Lyrics), Gypsy (Lyrics), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Creator), and Sweeney Todd (Creator).

Oscar Hammerstein II was an early mentor for Sondheim. After his parents’ divorce, around the age of 10, Sondheim became friends with Hammerstein’s son James, through him he met Oscar who would become a surrogate father and major influencer of his love for musical theater.

Sondheim studied music at Williams College, after graduating, he moved to New York City and studied composition privately with Milton Babbitt. During this time in the 1950s, Sondheim would work in both Los Angeles and New York City and his connections would eventually lead to him meeting Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins to collaborate with writing the lyrics to West Side Story. Read more about Sondheim’s life from Biography.

What makes Sondheim’s shows so special, the music?…the lyrics?… no, it’s the drama! Explore how this composer creates the perfect balance of music, lyrics, and theatrical timing from this NY Times article.

Sondheim’s love of words and meaning is not just for the theater, the composer is also a lover of word games and crosswords. Here is an article from 1968 New York Magazine, in which Sondheim explains how to do a “real” crossword. During this time, he wrote 42 cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine, GoodReads gives them a review of 4.6 out of 5, but good luck getting a copy, it is out of print.

About Sweeney Todd

The stories of Sweeney Todd dates back to London in the mid 19th century in a penny dreadful serial between 1846 and 1847. Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular literature that cost approximately a penny and contained stories with sensational plots. The characters of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett first appeared in a work titled The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance. Read the original here.

Sweeney Todd was written in 1979 with music and lyrics by Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on a 1973 play by Christopher Bond, in which the psychological backstory and murderous motivations of the title character is revealed. Listen to Sondheim describing the process of creating this masterpiece. Here, Sondheim discusses creating a musical with the New Yorker.

While Sweeney Todd feels very sensational and over the top on the surface, it’s actually a tale that is very human in nature. Sondheim describes it as a story about obsession, Sweeney’s obsession with revenge ultimately destroys him as well. Read more about the human nature and the duality that lives in man from Virginia Opera.

Sweeney Todd is the most opera like works by Sondheim. Over 80 percent of the score is set to music, with sung dialogue or dialogue with orchestral underscoring. Sondheim used this musical thread to keep the audience engaged with the suspense and drama, as he said in an interview, “if they (the audience) ever gets out of the fantasy, they are looking at you know, a ridiculous story with a lot of stage blood.”

From the Guardian’s article “A Close Shave”, a theater critic asks Schuyler G Chapin, former general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, why he had not commissioned Sweeney Todd at the Met. Chapin replied: "I would have put it on like a shot if I'd had the opportunity. There would have been screams and yells but I wouldn't have given a damn. Because it is an opera. A modern American opera.”

Check out this wonderful interview with original Mrs. Lovett, Angela Lansbury.

Cheers to London

The one character always present in Sweeney Todd is the city where it's told, like the others, it too has it’s beautiful and sinister sides. There is no more perfect place to tell this gruesome tale than in the societally split city of the industrial revolution. Cheers to fair London with a drink by its name, watch John build it here.

London Cocktail: Ingredients: 2 1/2 oz Gin, Bar Spoon of Absinthe, 1/4 oz Simple Syrup, 2 dashes of Orange bitters, Orange Peel for garnish. Directions: Add all the ingredients to a mixing vessel and stir over ice, strain into a chilled coupe glass, and garnish with an orange peel. Enjoy!

Synopsis

Overview

A barber, now named Sweeney Todd, returns to London from Australia 15 years after corrupt Judge Turpin convicted him of a crime he didn’t commit. Lusting for revenge, Sweeney Todd kills any man that gets in his way and with the help of Mrs. Lovett, disposes of their bodies by creating meat pies.