Sweeney Todd - Reviews from those of us who have seen it- Page 4

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 6:10pm

Goth, I think your take on LuPone is valid with regard to her first Mrs Lovett, but her second could not have been more different. I agree with perfectlymarvelous: Her Mrs. Lovett in the Doyle production was very sexual. I remember being surprised by that.

[morosco]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 6:26pm

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 6:31pm

I have had to rethink my agreeing with Thompson being the first sexual Mrs. Lovett based on above observations, particularly the ones about Lupone's Lovett, which was certainly a sexual performance (both times I saw it). (Of course all performances and characters are "sexual" in some respect, but let's not go there.)

But II stand by Thompson making Lovett a very sexy, erotically energized, alluring, and at times even absurdly adorable character; even as absurd as it may seem, even a genuinely desirable one.... and, in those respects a very different woman than a) any Lovett I've ever seen and b) any other Thompson role.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 6:36pm

I didn't mean to cause a class war by referring to the staging as Brechtian, and I wasn't saying it achieved any kind of "true Verfremdungseffekt" that Brecht himself sought and eluded all his life.

All I meant to say was that Hal Prince had Sondheim take a Victorian melodrama and layer over it a socio-economic critique of the Industrial Revolution with an environmental set by Eugene Lee that evoked a Victorian factory.

That, and the fact that the chorus frequently lined up at the apron of the stage and scowled at the audience as if they were mad at us.

Sorry if I called that Brechtian. Perhaps I should have called it "Prince-ian."

I loved it (for the most part) but a lot of theatergoers of Addy's mother's generation found it off-putting.

Updated On: 3/9/14 at 06:36 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 6:38pm

PJ, sorry if the tone of my post didn't come off right. It was more the fact that your comment made me question the use ofthe term in general--which I've heard used about Prince's Sweeney before, and it's always irked me. Your explanation makes a lot of sense, and I completely agree with you (and I get the impression from Sondheim, at least in that UK TV special about the making of the 1980 London production, that without Prince he hadn't really thought about the class aspect.)

[morosco]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 6:48pm

Sweeney Todd’s fashionable bleakness and essential emptiness struck some at the time of its first presentation on Broadway in 1979. Walter Kerr, longtime theater critic for the New York Times, came from a sufficiently old school to raise questions.

In a comment published March 11, 1979 (“Is ‘Sweeney’ on target?”), Kerr wrote, “Yet with so much to occupy our eyes and ears, and so much to respect, there is an uncomfortable void in the evening, to my mind a most serious one. The story, as told, leaves us restive and unabsorbed. It also leaves us puzzled as to why its creators went to so much trouble to tell it.”

After noting Todd’s conclusion that “all men are vermin” who should be exterminated, Kerr continued, “we are forced to ask ourselves: what is this musical about?” Kerr observed that certain lines seemed to suggest “the beginnings of a Brechtian parable ... Todd’s particular industry is justified because all men engage in it. But the analogy doesn’t work; we haven’t really been watching others behave in this fashion, haven’t concerned ourselves with a social structure erected upon it.” Entirely true.

There is, in fact, no basis for claiming that Sweeney Todd’s “major dramatic, if not musical, precursor is Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera,” as one of our current critics does.
Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 7:11pm

OK that article's argument lost me at "Sondheim’s music and lyrics are not successful." :P Still, an interesting read--thanks.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 9:42pm

Thanks for posting that, Morosco. I remembered that "Brechtian" was used against the production as a pejorative. I didn't remember that it was Walter Kerr.

[darquegk]

Posted: 3/9/14 at 10:41pm

Let's not forget that "Brechtian" has two meanings: the first, and least common, is "pertaining to the tenets of theatre Brecht espoused;" the second, and much more common, is "containing attributes, affectations or attitudes commonly linked with the emergence of Brecht and Weil's musicals and their imitators."

Scowling, confrontational choruses, beautifully "ugly" and unconventional music, pitch-black comedy and an espousal of the essential corruption of mankind. Throw in some unconventional and extremely theatrical touches, and you've got the "Brechtian style" if not the "Brechtian substance." (Case in point: the musical/concept album "The Wall" has often been described as Brechtian for these reasons, despite not being in any way related to Brecht's Epic Theatre and bearing only occasional musical resemblance to the work of Brecht and Weill.)