After hearing of Stephen Sondheim's passing, I had to watch this taped performance of his 1979 masterpiece SWEENEY TODD, filmed in LA in 1981 towards the end of the national tour.
SWEENEY won eight Tony Awards on Broadway and this won three Emmy Awards. Despite a central flaw, it remains essential to any musicals fan as a record of Hal Prince's original production.
The central flaw is that tv director Terry Hughes doesn't adapt performances for his medium, so while the actors are pushing energy to the back of the balcony, the camera is only a few feet away. Oddly enough, the women are the worst: Johanna's hydraulic soprano and the Beggar Woman's caterwauling are eventually irritating.
Angela Lansbury's Mrs Lovett, already a Music Hall grotesque, tips into sheer mugging; however she is so charismatic that you have to surrender to her. George Hearn's underplaying as Sweeney works a treat.
Shelf or charity shop? Of course, it's a shelf. Despite the over-pitched performances, it's great to see due to the quality of the production, Hugh Wheeler's marvellous book and, of course, Sondheim's magnificent score. As I have
often said, the final 20 minutes of the show - if done right - should be
one of the most relentlessly scary things you can experience, even if
you know the show It has an internal motor that if stoked properly
keeps gathering pace leaving dead bodies in it's wake and an icy, clammy
grip on
the back of your neck and here you get that as it should be.
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