Director Harold Prince thought it was a romance-whether with Sweeney’s dead wife, his imprisoned daughter, his razors or death, he didn’t say. I understand what it is to carry not the fiery, fast-burning resentments of youth but the uranium fuel rods of middle age, endlessly spitting out radiation that kills you slowly.Ĭomposer Stephen Sondheim always described “Sweeney Todd” as a show about obsession. I am the age now that I always imagined Sweeney to be (in point of fact, he’s meant to be in his 40s), and I have my own circles under my eyes to show for it. But if anything, my love for "Sweeney Todd" has only grown as I have gotten older. I admit, it’s a strange story to love as much as I do. Lovett-well, suffice to say it isn’t exactly in keeping with the beatitudes. What he discovers-and what he does then, at the suggestion of the lovesick, money-poor baker Mrs. ![]() ![]() Fifteen years later, Barker returns to London under the pseudonym Sweeney Todd to find his wife and daughter and have his revenge. It has been nearly 40 years since I first watched the “Great Performances” PBS broadcast of the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler/Harold Prince musical “Sweeney Todd,” which has just begun a much-celebrated revival on Broadway.īased on a British penny dreadful from the mid-18th century, the musical is a blood-spattered tale of revenge, obsession and, to paraphrase one song, “packing people into pies.” Benjamin Barker is a London barber transported to Australia on charges trumped up by a lecherous judge infatuated with Barker’s wife. “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” he sings. ![]() Then with the shriek of a factory whistle, the music shifts to the modern, violins driving us quietly forward into what feels like uncertain territory while the same notes repeat over and over again.Ī shadowy figure steps forward from the pale mob standing across the back of the stage. It begins with an overture you might expect to find in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride, a lugubrious organ signaling something eerie, Victorian.
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