From the Ledge

Many American musical theatre fans, yours truly included, passionately believe that the pinnacle of the form, both musically and dramatically was achieved by Stephen Sondheim’s highly-acclaimed 1979 musical Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which won 8 Tony Awards, including those for best musical, best book, best score, best direction and best leading performances.  I am a great fan and I’ll challenge anyone to say that there’s a better musical out there somewhere.  I’ve seen, and loved immensely, the 2001 concert version at the Ravinia Festival with George Hearn (who performed Sweeney in the original US tour opposite Angela Lansbury) and Patti LuPone, the 2002 Kennedy Center Sondheim Festival production with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Baranski, and the acclaimed 2005 Broadway revival with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone; I have also broken many a CD player with my numerous replaying of the original soundtrack with the wonderful voices of the original Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett, Len Cariou and the great Angela Lansbury.   For this Sweeney Todd groupie, no film version will ever do this masterpiece justice.  So, yes, I was prepared to detest Tim Burton’s new movie with Johnny Depp in the title role; yes, I expressed reservations about the movie to many friends; yes, I scoured both theatre and movie blogs to find proof that the movie will be atrocious; and yes, I even picked out beforehand the blog post title I was going to use when I write about the film (”Seems an awful shame; seems a downright waste”…which are the first lines that Mrs. Lovett sings before launching into the tour-de-force song that ends Act 1, “A Little Priest”).  But amazing surprises do occur, and preconceptions are ultimately meant to be shattered.  So I am humbled to admit that I was wrong on two counts.  First, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, the movie, is exceptional and probably one of the best motion pictures of 2007, not only honoring its masterpiece of a source, but actually creating a newly-enthralling masterwork, fully and intelligently using the possibilities of film as a medium (although many of its performances feel gayer than the Gay Pride Parade in the Castro- more on that later!).   Second, Helen Bonham-Carter, whose casting as Mrs. Lovett many musical theatre queens have loudly complained as the worst possible form of nepotism (since she is Burton’s life partner), is a fresh, wonderful, and ultimately successful choice to play this legendary role.

Sweeney Todd is based on a Victorian era novel about a crazy barber who slits his customers’ throats while waiting to exact revenge on the corrupt judge who falsely imprisoned him, raped his wife, and took away his daughter; and the barber’s accomplice, an equally-crazy meatpie baker who uses the murdered victims as stuffing for her pastries.  In the stage productions I have seen, this outrageous premise is treated with lots of macabre humor and wink-wink over-the-top theatrics, and a de-emphasis on the horrific elements of the story (except maybe for the Broadway revival, which John Doyle, the director, stripped of many musical theatre artifices, and set in an insane asylum).  Tim Burton keeps a lot of the dark gallows humor, but also, as many reviewers have already pointed out, he has also made Sweeney Todd into a horror movie, with lots of stomach-churning bloody scenes, densely shadowy cinematography, sets that look like they’re straight out of a Vincent Price movie, and an excitingly scary, perfectly brooding central performance from Johnny Depp.  The tone is a great ironic counterpoint to the beautiful, haunting, brilliantly-composed Sondheim score (for example, “Pretty Women” now comes off even more chilling as murderous foreplay than it did on stage).  But anyone can superimpose their own vision and style to a play or a novel and make it work.  I think what makes Burton’s direction dazzling is the fact that he intelligently and judiciously uses the active, kinetic qualities of film to clarify and expound on the musical numbers.  “A Little Priest” which seemed static on stage (and no one cared that it was because the music and lyrics were just so perfect) now clearly demonstrates the beginning of the descent into madness for the lead characters- Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett dizzyingly running from picture window to picture window and randomly picking out people walking or standing outside on Fleet Street. “By the Sea”, which again was pretty much just someone singing on stage, is now a clear and vivid depiction of Mrs. Lovett’s fantasy homelife with Sweeney (the refreshingly colorful visual imagery is terrific).  

Burton has assembled a terrific cast for the movie, although am I the only one who thinks that the performances are just this side of gay?  Depp is exceptionally good, and his natural delicacy and androgyny is highlighted to the hilt many times throughout the movie, especially when he is posing dramatically with his beloved razors.  Anthony, who on stage always came off as this himbo sailor, is played by Jamie Campbell Bower as a slightly more butch and better-fed Keira Knightley-like ingénue complete with wavy pageboy and breathy delivery.  Alan Rickman, who is also very good as Judge Turpin, comes out in his first scene, wearing, gasp, canary yellow hotpants with a crotch that looks like it’s carrying several bottles of scotch.  And then, Sacha Baron Cohen appears in the small but pivotal role of the rival barber Pirelli, and the hilarity and gayness factor just blasts into the stratosphere.  He delivers his lines like Borat with an Italian accent and perfect diction, with huge rolls of curls on either side of his head making him look like Princess Leia with a moutache, while wearing, yes, another pair of hotpants (what is the deal with this battle of the hotpants?!!), this time in powder blue, with a crotch so, uhmmm, expansive, he could have been hiding the Heisman trophy in there!  Finally, there’s Timothy Spall, brilliant as Beadle Banford, Judge Turpin’s fiercely loyal henchman.  Spall plays the beadle as this closet queen with a dowager stare and a purr (his delivery of the line “Maybe…banyan…leaf?  It’s so….bracing.” is priceless).  I actually think this is an effective artistic choice on both the director and the actor’s part, because what seemed on stage as the Beadle’s inexplicable loyalty to the Judge, is now more possibly the unrequited feelings of a closeted homosexual. 

Given these terrific performances, Helena Bonham-Carter, despite the natural greatness of the Mrs. Lovett part, needed to hold her own.  And she does, beautifully (despite the fact that when she sings the really difficult “Worst Pies in London”, you wanted to hand her an oxygen tank).  I did not see Angela Lansbury’s still-talked about original stage performance, but I did see the raved Baranski and LuPone performances, which were both larger-than-life.  Baranski played Mrs. Lovett as a doltish older woman who was more insane than Sweeney while LuPone injected a sexpot cougar quality to her madwoman interpretation.  Bonham-Carter on the other hand, plays Mrs. Lovett, as a devoted, quirky, and clear-eyed businesswoman.  She is, admittedly, a little crazy, but the audience can also understand how the cannibalistic meat pie business became a hit- she is a savvy marketer, customer-focused restaurateur, creative business professional.  It is an interestingly novel take, fully-fleshing out what is just implied in the play.  Mrs. Lovett could never have sung that paean to domesticity “By the Sea” if she was just primarily insane and did not have any aspirations.  Without her ideas and determination, Sweeney would have been brooding on his barber chair waiting for the Judge and the Beadle to stop by until the cows came home.  And then where would all the fun in this musical be?

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