Four by Sondheim by Stephen Sondheim

Author:Stephen Sondheim [Sondheim, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781557839855
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Published: 2013-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

THE MUSICAL

Steve’s original intention was to write a sung-through show without dialogue, but when this proved impractical he approached Hugh Wheeler, with whom he had collaborated on previous shows, including A Little Night Music and Pacific Overtures, to write the book for the show. It’s no secret that Hugh Wheeler and I had our differences: professional rather than personal, but since he died in 1987 I don’t feel it’s appropriate to discuss them here as there were doubtless faults on both sides, and he’s unable to put his point of view. What is indisputable is that Sweeney Todd is a book-heavy musical. Its storyline and character development run directly parallel to those in the play; the plot and subplots are complicated and all major characters interlock and interrelate. Indeed, were one feeling pretentious one could even subtitle the piece Aspects of Love, for that is what everyone in the show is looking for. It is Sweeney’s love for his wife and daughter that sustains him through his fifteen-year exile and brings him back to London; it is Mrs. Lovett’s love for Sweeney that makes her keep his razors and forges anew their fatal partnership. Judge Turpin and Anthony both love Johanna in their different ways; and Johanna reciprocates. The Beggar Woman once loved and now “loves” professionally. Tobias has never known love but desires it above all else. Add to all this Sweeney’s relationship with his razors and Mrs. Lovett’s with the coin of the realm and you have just about covered the entire spectrum from necrophilia through rape and filial duty to romance. We care about the characters in Sweeney because they care so passionately about each other; and on a good night we plunge headlong to triumph and disaster with them. The music sees to that. I’m not competent to comment on the score (I’ve been known to ask a conductor if he could cut three and a half bars of Verdi to help me stage an aria; when the wind is from the north I can still feel a piece of his baton lodged somewhere up my left nostril) beyond saying that for me it perfectly mirrors and distills the particular people and precise situations in the show. And lifts them to another plane.

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