Sweeney - What'll happen to Tobias? *SPOILER*

[COOOOLkid]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:06am

I've always wondered what will happen to Tobias after he kills Sweeney Todd... I mean, would he get sent to the asylum? Also, while we are on the topic, will Anthony and Johanna marry and move out of London?

[boxers7]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:08am

I assumed that's why he was in there. I figured he told someone Lovett and Sweeney's story and they thought he was crazy.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:11am

Or that he's there because what happened caused him to *actually* go crazy. Doesn't he get carted off right away in the original?

[So what...I sing]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:30am

I would assume that is why John Doyle set the first scene of the revival in the asylum. Then Tobias flashes back to the story of Sweeney Todd.

And I think that Antony is acutally shipped off to sea again before he and Joanna can get married, so she commits suicide and he is killed in battle.
Sarcasm is funny lol

[C is for Company]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:37am

I believe the Toby thing is kind of clearly cut out in the Doyle production, possibly even more so in the Prince staging.
As for Anthony and Johanna, I have wondered the same thing. I would actually find So what...I sing to have a pretty comical and yet not very surprising theory based on the show itself and all the tragedy. However, I never actually pictured Anthony as an actual sailor in combat. I kind of just picture him in some crappy boat floating in the water back and forth across the world....apparently seeing the treasures of the world

[Marguerite Chauvelin]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:40am

So wait, Anthony gets killed in battle and Joanna kills herself? Who in heck ends happily in that show?!

[C is for Company]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:43am

Would you honestly expect any happiness in a show in which 7 people line up at the end of the show in a 'bloody death coat'? lol

[Marguerite Chauvelin]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:45am

I guess not but Joanna and Anthony are the only characters that you are really made to cheer for in the show. One would hope at least they ended happily. Oh well...

[ljay889]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:48am

In my mind, Johanna and Anthony end up happily together.

[EugLoven]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 1:55am

In the original production, Toby is driven mad in the final moments having 1) Seen Beadle's dead body fall down the shoot, 2) Realizing he's ingested human meat, and 3) Hearing Lovett be murdered.

Tobias both in an act of self-preservation, vengeance, and insanity, kills Sweeney in what I believe are his last moments of sanity. Reciting the nursery rhyme absentmindedly as he slits Sweeney's throat... with hardly a reaction.

When Anthony and Johanna stumble downstairs after hearing the commotion, Tobias (who has never seen/met either of them) says: "Oh no sirs, you mustn't come in here. My mistress don't let nobody in here. Three times. Three times through the grinder. Smoothly. Smoothly..."

Tobias doesn't recognize that 1) These people can help him, 2) There are 4 dead bodies in the room with him, 3) Refers to his mistress as if she's still alive, and 4) Is preoccupied with the last instructions he received from someone he dearly loved.

The sad part of Tobias' fate, for me, is the dramatic irony of the lyrics of "Not While I'm Around." He swears to Lovett that nothing can harm her while he's around (he is hiding in the cellar when she is killed)... and thusly, because Lovett is no longer around, Tobias isn't safe either.

I do believe Tobias is incarcerated at Bedland and never released. This is where the revival picks up, whereupon, Tobias retells his experience. The debate arises whether or not the tale of Sweeney Todd ever really happened, or if the entire story is a fictional tale woven by a mad mind.

Left standing are Anthonya and Johanna. But lest we forget, Johanna has been in an asylum for months (no certain amount of time is defined in the show). While there, who knows what the maddness around her did to her own psyche. And when Anthony comes to find her, she kills Fogg to escape. As they're escaping, she does seem of sound mind, though a bit twitty: 1) She recognizes Anthony and that they were supposed to be married last August, 2) She recognizes the immediate danger they are in, 3) Recognizes why she is disguised in sailor's clothes, 4) Hides in the parlor when she hears someone calling a Beadle, and 5) Is clever enough to escape Sweeney's razor in the knick of time. I still do believe she is sane, though incredibly scarred from her asylum experience. Being with Anthony has breathed new life in her.

I can only hope Anthony takes Johanna to Spain or France like he promises. Remember, at the end of the story, neither Anthony nor Johanna know 1) Sweeney is her father, 2) The Beggar Woman is her mother, and 3) The Judge raped Johanna and kidnapped her. I hope Johanna and Anthony never learn, wishing not to, and start life a-new.
Updated On: 6/26/06 at 01:55 AM

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 2:01am

I've always imagined that Toby is probably in the asylum because he's gone crazy, not because he confessed to or was accused of murdering Sweeney. At least in Doyle's production, that strikes me as something that comes out as he's reflecting back on the events. And, particularly in that production, the events may or may not have actually happened.

I don't think that Anthony and Joanna end up happily ever after.... what do they know about one another at the end of the show? Not a great deal.
Updated On: 6/26/06 at 02:01 AM

[Bal]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 4:29am

Two things: I thought the John Doyle concept of Toby flashing back was so interesting because we're seeing everything through Toby's psyche... it brings SUCH a new dimension to the Toby/Lovett relationship... as she's pracncing around in fishnets and the like.

Sexual, much. Sort of an Oedipus complex.

The other thing was that I always kind of thought Johanna lost her sanity in the original staging... when Anthony's dragging her along and she's going "You said you'd come for me Sunday..." it really seems to me like she totally lost it while she was in the asylum. She was a bit highly-strung and fragile to begin with.

[gumbo2]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 4:51am

I feel like Johanna does figure out that Sweeney was her dad. I don't remember what my reasoning was for that...but it's late, so sue me. I would imagine that Johanna and Antony would end up happily together, since everyone else is dead, there's no one else to ruin it.

[EponineAmneris]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 8:33am

EugLoven, You said it best Very well written and it's if you said what I was going to say.

Johanna & Anthony have a "happily ever after" far away and they never know her parentage.

Poor Tobias In the earlier stagings, it was quite obvious, he was a bit unsettled at the end and would more than likely end up in Bedland. With this staging, it's IS like a flashback, like he is telling us about how he ended up where he started.

[sicetergo]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 10:04am

Sondheim has said that no-one lives happily ever after at the end - of those left standing at the end two are mad (Johanna and Tobias) and one is in deep shock - Anthony.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 10:28am

Bal, I agree; in Doyle's version, there's definitely a lot of playing with "parental" figures and Oedipal concepts. I like it, personally.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 10:39am

I love the new layers of thought that Doyle added.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 10:43am

I love Doyle.

[Marguerite Chauvelin]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 11:40am

I love Doyle too. I'm at a camp now at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and we're performing on Marx stage. I keep thinking "Raul was here" "The Piano was here" it's exciting.

Anyway, several people mentioned "Bedland", is that a real place or did you mean "Bedlam?"

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 12:04pm

That's so exciting, Marguerite. And I was just about to point out the same thing about Bedlam (i.e. Bethlem Royal Hospital).

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 12:15pm

It's a thriller. People don't end up happily ever after in thrillers, the whole point is to kill nearly everyone off and drive everyone else crazy :P

Don't forget that Johanna has spent the last, what is it... year? in an insane asylum. I think the writing isn't really clear about this because the music suggests she may have gone a bit bonkers but the book portrays her as sane. Stephen Sondheim has said himself she was never all there and this probably made it MUCH worse.

On top of that, she killed Fogg. She's either going to jail or back to the crazy house.

As for Anthony, he's an (almost unwitting) accomplice to ALL of this. If they don't throw him in jail too, he'll probably go back to being a sailor, or maybe kill himself out of despair for Johanna.

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 12:57pm

Too bad the insanity plea didn't exist back then!

[Christoph]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 2:10pm

There is a large discrepancy in Doyle's version in having Toby relate the events from the asylum. How can Toby possibly relate events of which he either was not a witness to himself, happened before he arrived on the scene or contain facts that he could not possibly know himself? Toby has no first-hand knowledge of Sweeney's background, Johanna and Anthony's roles in the events or how Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney came to their grisly arrangement. How then can he relate them to anyone? Unless, of course, none of it happened and it is just the ramblings of a delusional mind - but then that seems a bit of a cheat.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 2:17pm

Tobias becomes a Cabaret/Rock singer with teenage groupies at the Stage Door everynight who think he is the next Elvis.

[sicetergo]

Posted: 6/26/06 at 3:32pm

Christoph: the point of seeing it from Tobias' point of view is that it's his version of events, he and the other inmates tell his version of the story.