I think that perhaps you have been watching it indirectly. IIRC, some of it's in
Broadway: The American Musical. Footage of Sondheim at the piano, discussing the score and how he put it together. Not positive if it's in there and don't have it handy to check.
Btw, if you're in New York or Los Angeles and can get to the Museum of Television and Radio, you can see
The Making of Sweeney Todd there.
Are you reading Banfield's
Sondheim's Broadway Musicals or Swain's
The Broadway Musical? Both are worth looking at.
I don't think that Sweeney is without hope in the first scene with Anthony. If anything, he's full of hope and expectation, though fear as well. He's tense and nervous, but also expecting to find Lucy and Johanna. The expectation of being reunited with them is what's kept him going for 15 years. He may have considered the possibility that it wouldn't work out that way, but the hope is what's kept him going.
I don't mean to suggest that there's no connection at all between the first time he sings "The Barber and His Wife" and the reprise, but the circumstances and his feelings are utterly different and his objective is utterly different. The actor might choose to put in a layer of Sweeney recalling his earlier words with some irony. Or not.
Your explanation of what you meant does clarify it for me and I do agree that Sweeney is, at least in part, aware of how his naivete has destroyed him twice. He thought he was no longer naive, could no longer be taken in, could never again be at the mercy of someone who had power over him, who was manipulating him.
By the "Now, signorini," stuff, I'm talking about the passage in the Pirelli sequence that starts:
Now, signorini, signori,
We mix-a da lather
It's heard on the OBCR, with a second verse. It was cut during previews (as indicated in the published script and I believe in the score as well), but the first half was restored in the first London production and the tour, perhaps to slightly compensate for the cutting of the tooth pulling.
Here's what Sondheim said about the chorus:
Q: I'm surprised to hear that you don't like Brecht because I've always thought of
Sweeney Todd being Brechtian.
A: Many people say that and I'll tell you why. You get the lower classes walking up and singing at you so you say "Aha." Then there's the line about "man eating man." But you must understand that it is sung by an insane man at the height of his insanity. It's not the author's point of view at all. Brecht constantly alienates you from the story by having characters turn front and make points.
Sweeney is entirely a plot piece which has a ballad motif running through as if there were a narrator. Brecht doesn't have a narrator. If anything,
Sweeney's closer to
Allegro, which also had a chorus.
Sweeney is based on Greek principles, with a chorus commenting specifically and directly. They tell the story. Everybody else just acts within the scenes. "Man devouring man" is sung to another character, not us. The show isn't Brechtian; it's a straightforward operetta with narration by the chorus.
[That's from
In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights, edited by David Savran. If you're looking for it, be aware that there's a second volume, and that's not where you'll find the Sondheim interview.]
Regarding the third customer: Cariou was able to play Sweeney's reactions there very effectively and much more subtly than Hearn did.
"Marry Me a Little" was the first of the four songs Sondheim wrote for the final song in
Company. In fact, he realized it was wrong even before he finished it, but Judy Prince liked what he had written so much that he finished it as a present for her.
I don't think that Sondheim has said that
Company was his attempt to make
Allegro work. He has said something to the effect that his whole career has been about trying to make
Allegro work. I think he's said that this was something that Cameron Mackintosh had said to him and he realized how true it was.
The Sondheim show that would be closest to
Allegro is surely
Merrily. HGO might mean Houston Grand Opera.
Updated On: 10/27/06 at 05:01 AM
