Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

November 13, 2021 5:58 AM

Steven Sondheim had dominated the 1970s on Broadway. As the decade closed out, he turned to a modern adaptation of a Victorian melodrama for source material. With Hugh Wheeler, adapting Christopher Bond, 1979's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street is possibly Sondheim's most world-wide hit. Here is the 2014 New York Philharmonic Concert Performance [2h23m], with Bryn Terfel, Emma Thompason, Philip Quast, and many others.

I hope you're hungry, we've a lot of Sweeney to get through!

The original 1979 production, directed by Hal Prince, featured Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou. The Original Broadway Cast Album is available as a YouTube playlist. Also, this audience bootleg of the original cast. [2h24m] The existence of this document is remarkable considering the state of video recording technology in 1979. Also, we have a full audio recording of Opening Night, 1979.

Cariou and Lansbury were replaced by George Hearn and Dorothy Loudon during the original Broadway run. This was documented, again by an audience member, in 1980. [2h33m]

Also in 1980, the Broadway production transferred to the West End, with Dennis Quilley and Shellia Hancock, directed again by Hal Prince. Scenes From The Making Of A Musical 1h24m] is a London Weekend Television documentary that has interviews and performances and stuff from this production. Sondheim gets into his musical development, if you're into that kind of thing.

The well-known Angela Lansbury/George Hearn filming of the play comes from the First US National Tour, which was filmed in 1982, and is not available for free public viewing. It can be rented or purchased from Amazon or Apple. We do have, however, the Tour Cast Album available [Archive.org link, streaming and downloads links]. Also, here's an insightful 1981 interview with Hearn and Lansbury and local curmudgeon Elliot Norton [28m] from Boston public or public-access television.

The first Broadway revival was in 1989. We don't have much record of this, with Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler playing the leads. Here's a little taste, with (audio only) A Little Priest. Also, here's a Pandemic-Era-Made-Possible cast and crew video reflection on the show [1h46m] from Jan 2021. With director, producers, stars, and more.

1992 marks the beginning of Sweeney Todd's further progression around the globe. A Hungarian language production in Budapest premiered. All I have found is this this 2m trailer that is more a look-and-feel sort of video.

1993 saw the first London revival, with Alun Armstrong and Julia McKenzie, and Dennis Quilley (former Todd) as Judge Turpin. Quilley later replaced Armstrong, and this production was broadcast on BBC in 1994 [2h33m, Archive.org link, streaming and download links].

Sweeney's global expansion continued in 1995 with Barcelona's production, in Catalan [pro-shot, 2h33m].

Meanwhile, a concert performance was created first by the New York Philharmonic in 2000, and later redone by the San Francisco Symphony in mid-2001. George Hearn and Patti LuPone lead a really great cast, directed by Lonny Price (of Best Worst Thing) in an excellent PBS filming [2h12m]. Also, there is a Bonus Documentary [25m] (I assume from the DVD, sound gets a bit out of sync by the end, but not horrible).

The second London revival was in 2004, with Paul Hegarty and Karen Mann. Directed by John Doyle, the cast all played the instruments for the show (no pit band), and the setting was a mental asylum with patients playing out the story. This production transferred to Broadway in 2005, with Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris. Here's an audience filming of the Broadway production [2h6m]. Here is the same production closed-captioned in Spanish [click the CC button] for those would would appreciate that sort of thing. And the cast album as a YouTube playlist.

[John Doyle has done a lot of these sort of productions. My question is, did LuPone have to learn to play the tube for this, or did she already know how? This is answered when LuPone and Cerveris appear on Theater Talk [25m] for an interesting actorly chat.]

2008 saw the show run in Madrid. The Cast Album is available [Archive.org link, streaming and download links].

A third London revival came in 2012, this time with Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, set in the 1930s. This production has an interestingly mostly-static audience bootleg [2h24m] as well as a YouTube cast album playlist.

In 2014, Lonnie Price revised his earlier concert staging. Please see the link above the fold.

2014 also saw the staging of a prog metal version of Sweeney [DC Metro]. Here's Epiphany from that production on SoundCloud. [I want this full cast album SO BAD!]

I mean, Sweeney's been performed so many ways! There was a production inside a pie shop that got transferred to Off-Broadway where they rebuilt the pie shop in the theater [2m14s]! [Second video, 2m15s]

For goodness' sake, back in 1979 a Disco Version of The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd was released! (By Thomas Z Shepard, a longtime producer of Sondheim and other Broadway cast albums). B-side: I've Got My Eye On You (unreleated to Sweeney Todd, although the bass line is very similar)

Stars In The House did a reunion show with Len Cariou, Victor Garber, Sarah Rice, and Ken Jennings [1h23m] in Oct 2020, all original cast members.

Is that enough Sweeney? Wikipedia lists productions in Finnish and French for which I can find no online record. Productions are mounted around the world by theater and opera houses. I don't think Sweeney's time on this planet will end anytime soon.

posted by hippybear (40 comments total)

In high school, we went to see a production in a tiny university theater. They got real, fresh, hot meat pies from a local bakery for each performance so you could smell them from any seat in the house. It was awesome.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:02 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

Hippybear, I have been waiting and hoping for this one since your very first Sondheim megapost! I do not know where to start in my swooning over this FPP! Well, yes, I will start with how excited I am over that bootleg with Len Cariou--I've only ever seen the George Hearn one! I've heard the Len Cariou recording, and that moment where he rumbles out "To-oby" is just the most chilling moment in musical history. My kids have had to hear hours and hours of exposition on why the only version they've seen (Tim Burton's Hot Topic Jamboree) is just wrong and bad and wrong, and how important it is that Sweeney's voice is low enough to scrape through the sewers.

I'm actually a little nervous to watch other versions, for fear I won't find them "right"? Which I know isn't the way musicals work! But still!
posted by mittens at 6:20 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

I first saw it live during the '97-'98 run at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the park. But my introduction to the play was the finale of the movie Jersey Girl where they did "God That's Good" at a high school pageant. (I have no real desire to rewatch the film, but it was fun seeing that scene again. I had forgotten that Betty Aberlin from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was the teacher.)
posted by indexy at 7:11 AM on November 13, 2021

The 2005/6 version apparently borrowed from ideas developed by Susan Schulman for the York Theatre in 1989, which had to fit in a 100-seat playhouse built in a former gymnasium. That production was famously parodied as Teeney Todd, but audiences loved the intimacy.

I saw the touring version (2007) in SF with Sweeney (David Hess) and Mrs. Lovett (Judy Kaye) playing orchestra parts as well as acting and it was amazing.

I remain firmly in camp Hearn/LuPone for recordings, Angela Lansbury never really worked for me.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:38 AM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

I mildly enjoyed the Tim Burton film. But watching that film mostly made me want to see a non-Burton version. Thanks for the links.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:43 AM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I am still amazed that my first experience of this utterly brilliant work of art was an undergraduate university production. I have no idea what brought together such remarkable young talent, but the staging was inventive and the performances were really superb. I walked out of the campus theater stunned at such a great work of art.

Of course youthful enthusiasm and the passage of decades make my memories suspect, but I'm not sure any of the half dozen fantastic professional productions I have seen since - thank you Hippybear for finding recordings of so many! - moved me as much as that first remarkable experience.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:38 AM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have been wishing and wishing I could see Dorothy Loudon’s take on Mrs. Lovett — and here it is! I’ve just watched “The Worst Pies in London” and even on that bootleg, her comic perfection shines through.

The film — well, how disappointing. I can’t think of another director off the top of my head… but I always thought Toni Collette would have been a great filmic Mrs. Lovett. Brash, broad, comic, but vulnerable— she’s perfect. The role of Sweeney would have been a chance for a normally-comic actor to go dark, dark, dark— perhaps Robin Williams? Alan Rickman was the one correct choice in the film.
posted by profreader at 9:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

Sweeney is the rare Sondheim work, as I see it, that is both flawless and entirely Sondheim. That is, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a lovely farce, but Sondheim's role is limited. Follies and Company both get a little rancid and dour with their cynicism (for me); A Little Night Music becomes a chore; Into the Woods has the right general idea for Act 2 but stumbles over itself in the execution. (I will admit to never having seen Pacific Overtures or Anyone Can Whistle if someone wants to vouch for them.)

I think the key is that Sondheim's assignment was dead simple: He wanted to scare the audience, and he wanted to use Bernard Herrmann as his musical starting point. He also wanted the tone and details of a Victorian penny dreadful. That's a very doable assignment, one at which Sondheim can overachieve. I contrast this with "how dreams and friendship go subtly wrong, told backwards for some reason" (Merrily We Roll Along) or "the nature of art, memory, and the artistic process" (Sunday in the Park With George) or "just keep workshopping and by god we'll have a show some day" (Road Show or Bounce or whatever it is).

I think of Sondheim as a technician who, paradoxically, can only transcend his technical skill by bearing down on the technical aspects with all his might. When he reaches for larger and more elusive themes he gets (again, as I see it) lost and, frankly, doesn't always have much to say. (Are there any real insights into marriage in Company?) He's conceptually at sea but he keeps swimming harder hoping to reach shore.

But give him a compact, realizable concept like Sweeney — no bold metatheatrical conceits, no big ideas, just drive — and he can realize the fuck out of it.
posted by argybarg at 9:59 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

I've seen the Lansbury/Hearn film, which is wonderful; the Tim Burton movie was better than I was expecting. That pie-shop off-Broadway production looks like the one we went to, although we were crammed into a second balcony with no pie.

What amazes me about "Sweeney Todd" is that it really is cathartic. We walked back to our hotel from whatever godforsaken part of Greenwich Village that production took place and we were walking on clouds. That's what people say about Grand Guignol, and I believed it in theory, but until Sweeney Todd, I had never seen any. But is *has* everything: blood, madness, songs, young love, comedy, coincidence, more blood, more songs; you really get your money's worth for the evening! It's one thing that Sondheim can take particular mundane events and turn them into songs that allow you to empathize with the character who has the mundane life; it's a different thing that he can take singular and horrific events and turn them into songs that allow you to empathize with characters who are insane monsters. But both things are related: Sondheim turns the particular into the understandable. You really have to admire the way he can tackle any subject, and then add an extra challenge, like "all of them waltzes" or "spanning the genres of musical theatre". Is there an extra musical challenge in "Sweeney Todd", or was the cannibalism sufficient?
posted by acrasis at 10:05 AM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

One of my favorite musicals of all time. I was lucky enough to work on a production where George Hearn starred. My most vivid memory was of the director trying to adjust the blocking of a certain scene so that Hearn's hand was more visible, and Hearn saying, "I could just play the part left handed." Which he then proceeded to do, without any mistakes, for the rest of the rehearsals and shows.

> "Is there an extra musical challenge in 'Sweeney Todd'... ?"

"Pretty Women" includes passages in 4/8, 5/8 and 6/8 time. "Ladies in Their Sensibilities" has an extensive passage in 5/8. "My Friends" has 4/4 insertions into a predominantly 3/4 song. "The Worst Pies In London" switches meter all over the place, and I think "City on Fire" might be in 15/16.
posted by kyrademon at 10:12 AM on November 13, 2021 [14 favorites]

Is there an extra musical challenge in "Sweeney Todd", or was the cannibalism sufficient?

In addition to the metric trickiness that kyrademon called out, there's also some really tricky dissonant choral harmonies going on. I used to sing with some pretty decent amateur choruses back in high school and college and I remember "God, That's Good" as being one of the trickiest pieces my college chorus ever performed (and this was a group that did Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms that same year). It's easy to miss it because it's sung quickly in a very staccato style, but the chorus parts are hiding a very crunchy and dissonant chorale that can be very treacherous.
posted by firechicago at 11:16 AM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

Sweeney Todd does manage to capture the flavor (ahem) of Victorian penny dreadfuls without being a penny dreadful--as anyone who has managed to get through the original original source material, The String of Pearls, can probably attest. (It's livelier than Varney the Vampyre, but then again, it's also much shorter.)

I've seen it live three times, most recently the off-Broadway production that a couple of people have mentioned above. I was down at the tables (complete with meat pies for dinner), and the night I attended, Sweeney's rampage through the audience was scary enough to make one person scream.

One trend I wish directors would abandon is restoring the Judge's solo. I totally understand that you might want to give the actor more to do, but a) the Judge is extraordinarily creepy without the song, b) it's in an awkward spot, plot-wise, and c) it's also not what you'd call the show's musical highlight.
posted by thomas j wise at 11:29 AM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

The only thing I know about Sweeney Todd is some high school or one of the script rental houses worked it up and a bunch of teenagers performed it at the 1988 International Thespian Festival. They had this crazy contraption that the victims would slide down into the restaurant and I'm positive it was not safe.

I can find no record of this festival even taking place, but I was there and I remember it more than 30 years later.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:33 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

They got real, fresh, hot meat pies from a local bakery for each performance so you could smell them from any seat in the house.

This strikes me as the kind of marketing you possibly just don't want for your bakery.

I don't have anything of substance about the musical to add but I love it too.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:45 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was in the ensemble of a production at the Publick Theatre in Boston in the mid-90’s and it remains one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done as a performer. It’s also my favorite. I had to just give myself up to the whirlwind of voices and instruments and movement and let it consume me. It felt amazing.
posted by feistycakes at 1:29 PM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]

Music Theatre International, one of the big licensing houses, has “Jr” versions of many titles — trimmed, simplified and made suitable for kids— typically to be performed by schools younger than high schools (which can often manage the full versions.)

I swear that a “Sweeney Todd, Jr” exists… although maybe I dreamed it.
posted by profreader at 2:02 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

The hippybear post I have been waiting for! I am working my way through the links now. Sweeney Todd strikes me as a difficult show - but I've seen it a few different times (West End, tour, local, and high school) and have yet to see a bad version. (Except maybe the film. I've still seen that a couple times.)

The Doyle tour did have a local restaurant tie-in in my city, and it was delicious.
posted by mersen at 2:36 PM on November 13, 2021

This concert version of A Little Priest with Patti LuPone, George Hearn, and Michael Cerveris is also real fun, if you like that sort of thing. (And if you've read this far into the threat, chances are good.)
posted by mersen at 2:43 PM on November 13, 2021

I was in the chorus of a community theater production of this in my early 20s. I have never forgotten that the choral music contains a unison high b flat that all four parts (SATB) are expected to sing. There is no harmony.
posted by wittgenstein at 2:50 PM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

I just realized that I was sitting 3 feet away from my copy of "Finishing the Hat", so I read the section on Sweeney Todd. Sondheim has many technical comments about words and names and the arc of scenes.

Argybargy, I should have hit "preview" and read your comment. I think you are largely correct. "Sweeney Todd" is also my vote for most successful Sondheim musical, and you are right about the obsession with technique. To answer your question, I don't think "Company" has anything useful to say about marriage, but it has many useful things to say about groups versus couples versus individuals, and it's easy for Sondheim to cover that with choruses, duets and solos. He does break things down into musical concepts, and it's up to us to put it back in human terms.
posted by acrasis at 3:01 PM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

I will have so much to say when I have a moment to look at the links, but I did want to pop in and mention that at least three versions are available on DVD, for those of us who like that sort of thing: the Lansbury/Hearn version, the LuPone/Hearn In Concert version, and the Tim Burton Bonham-Carter/Depp movie.

I saw the touring cast of the John Doyle production - TWICE - and it was amazing and wonderful.

So much to say. I'll be back.

Thank you for this, hippybear!
posted by kristi at 5:15 PM on November 13, 2021

Also, if you haven't seen the cast of Hamilton's Broadway Cares video ... well, you MUST.
posted by kristi at 5:17 PM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]

Also: 2012 Sweeney Todd cast doing West End Eurovision - with Michael Ball's actual Eurovision song and a Sweeney twist.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:39 PM on November 13, 2021

What amazes me about "Sweeney Todd" is that it really is cathartic.

To seek revenge may lead straight to hell, but everyone does it, and seldom as well ...
posted by Brachinus at 7:51 AM on November 14, 2021 [6 favorites]

Working through the links - I love how the Youtube 2014 concert bleeps out the word "shit". Cannibalism for profit and the aforementioned Judge's song are fine - but no bad language!

Also in that documentary about the 1980 production, wow those costumes were over the top. I think I like the trend towards more subtle Sweeneys.
posted by mersen at 8:16 AM on November 14, 2021

>"Is there an extra musical challenge in 'Sweeney Todd'... ?"

As kyrademon said, there are some complex rhythm structures and tempos. When I was part of a college production of it, we had a soprano from the music school, majoring in operatic voice, as Joanna, and for the life of her she had no sense of rhythm. She had a helluva time trying to get down parts like "He means to marry me Monday, that's what he said, I'd rather die..."

Really, the vocal parts in this overall, but particularly for Sweeney, are rich enough that classical opera companies sometimes rotate this show in among their usual Verdi and Puccini. I saw Bryn Terfel do it live in Chicago, it was great!
posted by dnash at 8:49 AM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]

The opening number requests a high C (two octaves above middle C) from the sopranos of the chorus.

I sing first soprano in choir. I do not have a high C. (I can nail that high B-flat, though. Y'all can hide behind me.)
posted by humbug at 10:45 AM on November 14, 2021

While looking for something else, I found this series dissecting the music of Sweeney. I'm no musician, but I found the first two parts interesting (there are twenty installments in all). From youtube
posted by Death and Gravity at 3:01 PM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Previously about the 2014 concert, during which one erstwhile MeFite coined the wonderful phrase "holy all the shits".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:11 PM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

I have feelings about how Mrs. L should be interpreted and played, especially wrt intelligence and fear. I find her much more interesting if she's smarter than Sweeney, but works hard to hide it. I assume Mr. Lovett was abusive (which is part of why Benjamin Barker was so appealing), and so, even if Mr. T weren't murdery, she'd be operating out of fear a lot. But then I also think "gleefully evil" is the least interesting choice, and "self-interestedly amoral" much more compelling.

Emma Thompson, in that 2014 concert version, nailed it for me, having seen both Broadways and the movie (ttcs).

Eta: I just saw my own comment on that post. This is the short version of the essay I mentioned back then
posted by DebetEsse at 5:58 PM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]

Aaand, it appears I posted the long version back then. Also found a comment from hippybear that mentions searching for a video of the Lupone on YouTube.

This is what we call foreshadowing.
posted by DebetEsse at 6:17 PM on November 14, 2021

Sweeney Todd School Edition
posted by hippybear at 5:16 PM on November 13 [+] [!]


Hey, the Toledo School for the Arts did this a few years back! Fantastic performance.
posted by charred husk at 6:55 AM on November 15, 2021

Oh my gosh, CheeseDigestsAll. Teeny Todd! I had that Forbidden Broadway album on cassette tape as a musical-obsessed teenager and to this day, I occasionally think to myself, "Twenty ton bridge, twenty ton barge, Hal Prince's version was ugly but large."
posted by merriment at 7:20 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

But then I also think "gleefully evil" is the least interesting choice

Which is why I found Helena Bonham-Carter's performance so uninteresting. And shame on Burton for not insisting "You aren't playing Bellatrix Lestrange!"
posted by Gelatin at 7:37 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I read that entire linked post, including DebetEsse's delightful essay. (And the discussions of upcoming musical film disasters. No-one predicted Cats, what optimistic times those were!)

I've been going back and forth about the comment above about dropping the Judge's song. I don't like it either. But with it, he makes a trio - Sweeney's revenge, Mrs. Lovett's avarice, and the Judge's hedonism.

All three have echoes in the minor characters - the Judge and his Beadle, Pirelli the fraud and Sweeney the demon, and Lucy haunts Mrs. Lovett. And in the younger generation, they each have a sacrifice to make, which they all eventually do.

Sweeney drives the story and, as noted, Mrs. Lovett is the most complex. The Judge is a pillar of the community and the show. And his solo makes it skin-crawlingly clear that everything he does - taking in orphans, praying to God - can get pressed into service of his lust. It could have been a more pleasant song ("Hellfire"), but maybe it's okay that that's just a horrid few minutes.

(I finished all my Sweeney soundtracks, and then realized I do have the film DVD, so... sigh. Here we go. )
posted by mersen at 6:02 PM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

This video is terrible quality, but The Two Ronnies' parody (also called "Teeny Todd") is worth a giggle. It's become a running joke between my sister and me - whenever one of us says, "I'm upstairs," for any reason, the other will reply, "And I'm down here with the HP sauce."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:52 PM on November 15, 2021

In high school, we went to see a production in a tiny university theater. They got real, fresh, hot meat pies from a local bakery for each performance so you could smell them from any seat in the house.

Several years back I saw an amateur production where the pies were provided by my town's very own local pie shop, next door to a barber's, Sweeney & Todd.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 5:16 AM on November 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think there's another way to play Mrs. Lovett, one I haven't seen tried but would like to.

Her overriding goal, twin to Sweeney's goal of revenge, is economic survival, and she's using and manipulating Sweeney to get it.

It's pretty much there in the text. She's dirt-poor at the start, separated from the Beggar Woman only by virtue (if you can call it that) of a property that brings in no money and a profitless pie shop. (And, arguably, lack of attractiveness. She knows what the Judge did to Lucy, and there but for the grace of ugliness...) She recognizes Sweeney, and she gives him back his means of economic survival so that he can foster hers. This is dangerous, of course -- he's deranged, and she knows it -- so she repeatedly has to talk him down off various ledges and convince him to slow down ("Wait") so that he can make the money she is hoping for.

"By the Sea" spells it out, (lower-)middle-class heaven. She doesn't love Sweeney -- in that song he is a backdrop to her dreams of beach walks and cottages -- but she'll pretend mightily when she needs to. She can actually be something vaguely resembling decent (to Toby), but Sweeney isn't a romantic dream, just a meal ticket.
posted by humbug at 7:34 PM on November 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think it would be playable, and would add a layer to Sweeney's victimization, but you'd have to figure out why she wouldn't have sold the razors. It also makes Poor Thing play really weird, and I'm not sure when she has to recognize him for it to work.
posted by DebetEsse at 9:02 PM on November 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I loved that production in a pie shop off Broadway so much I talked a friend of mine into going. She turned out to be something like the 10,00th pie customer and had her photo taken with Mrs Lovett.
posted by interplanetjanet at 9:21 AM on November 18, 2021 [2 favorites]