Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
#1Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/16/07 at 3:20pm
I didn't get the chance to see Elaine Paige in sweeney todd when she was in it. Can some one please tell me how her performance was ?
-thanks
Norma D
Understudy Joined: 9/22/06
#2re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/16/07 at 3:36pmI saw her performance-I thought she was quite good. I think Angela Lansbury is still the difinitive. Obviously I am an Elaine fan-so I might be biased but I really enjoyed her in it. Others will make comments to the contrary as I found out by previous discussions I have had on this board. IMO She was fab at Worst Pies in London! :)
Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men. --Margo Channing
#2re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/16/07 at 10:51pmThanks. I wonder if anyone recorded any of that performance lol
Auggie27
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/13/03
#3re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/17/07 at 10:20am
I thought she was as close to the Lansbury gold standard as anyone could get (let's skip the Doyle production -- a different take). She was also, persuasively, authentic -- a British woman who could play the low-class tawdriness effortlessly. Not always an easy aspect to capture, and Angela herself famously had trouble nailing it in rehearsal, despite the role being written for her.
Alas, it was in the cavernous New York State Theater, with poor sound (half opera -- i.e. nothing, and half musical theater, occasional use of body mics on low, or so it seemed.) The lyrics were too often lost, and it seemed woefully under-rehearsed. She could've gone into the oritinal b'way production so easily.
I'm a Paige fan, and thought her Norma in SUNSET was also one of the finest -- she did something no one else bothered to do -- use Gloria Swanson. She more or less looked like her at times, and wasn't afraid of her line-readings. I thought she blended the Glenn Close comedy with the thrilling (but humorless) vocals of Buckley. I saw her in CATS, before it became the World's Biggest Show, but missed her EVITA. I can go all the way back to BILLY, when she was the tarty girlfriend oppostie Michael Crawford. She's earned her diva status. Would love to have seen her PIAF.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
#4re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/17/07 at 1:41pmRight, she was as close to Lansbury as you were gonna get and that's what I loved about her. She also did some great comic things in "By The Sea."
#5re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/17/07 at 1:44pmShe also had a wonderful chemistry with her co-star, the terrific baritone Mark Delavan. However, the entire production was rather bland and unevenly cast.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
wiggum2
Broadway Star Joined: 9/21/03
#6re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/17/07 at 1:51pm
I so thought the title of this thread was Elaine Stritch in Sweeney Todd
hahahahahaha
BrodyFosse123
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/27/06
#7re: Elaine Paige in sweeney todd ?
Posted: 8/17/07 at 1:58pm
There are quite a bit of audio and video bootlegs of Elaine in SWEENEY TODD. Can't direct you to any sources, but search for them. They do exist and in plentiful.
Videos