Obscure Videos: Sweeney Special
On July 26, 1980, London Weekend Television broadcast a South Bank Show special called "Sweeney Todd": Scenes from the Making of a Musical, and it ranks as one of the finest documentaries on a single musical ever telecast. It begins with a clip from the opening number, and throughout there is a generous amount of footage from the show, allowing one to glimpse the original physical production, which was more elaborate than the U.S. tour that was preserved and released on video.
We flash back to the first day of rehearsal for the London production, with director Hal Prince telling the cast that while the usual Stephen Sondheim-Prince credo is "less is more," that was altered for Sweeney Todd to "more is more." We then cut to Sondheim at his piano, stating that melodrama and farce are his favorite theatrical forms. Prince says that at first he encouraged Sondheim to get Frank Dunlop Sherlock Holmes to direct Sweeney, with Prince changing his mind when he realized the show could be about the class system, the industrial age, and the incursion of machinery on the soul.
Demonstrating the set to the company, Prince says the concept is that the whole play takes place in a Victorian factory or foundry, where the product they make is a show called Sweeney Todd. One gets to see in the design and in the live footage the grimy glass roof that overhung the original production but was eliminated for the tour.
Sondheim discusses his recurring use of the "Dies Irae," from the traditional requiem mass and one of the composer's favorite melodies, to create a creepy, threatening feeling in the score. He also notes how he was careful in the score to differentiate between the lead characters, depicting Sweeney as obsessive, brooding, and self-involved, while Mrs. Lovett is cheerful, practical, and amoral.
Now a pattern is established for the rest of the program. Separate numbers will be highlighted, and for each, we get Sondheim explaining how he created the number; additional comments on that number from cast members; footage of the number in rehearsal; then footage of the number in full-out live performance.
"The Worst Pies in London" is the first number focused upon, and it must be said that Hancock sounded much better vocally later in the run than she does in the clips featured here. Still, her incisive acting allows her to come across well in the footage.
Discussing the Pirelli scene, Sondheim explains why he detests writing "peasants on the green" sequences. Then comes perhaps the most memorable moment of the program. In rehearsal, Prince decides to cut a portion of Pirelli's music, believing that it slows down a show that depends on continuous tension. John Aron, the actor hired to play Pirelli, throws a small hissy fit, declaring that a third of his role has now been cut, it's no longer the role he auditioned for, and he would never have auditioned had he known the part would wind up so small. Prince says if he wants to leave the cast, he can leave. Not only does Aron decide to stay, but, wonder of wonders, Prince will cast Aron again six years later, for the role of Piangi in the original London cast of The Phantom of the Opera.
At this point in the program, there's a useful sidebar offering a history of the legend of Sweeney Todd, beginning with its roots in real-life events in Paris almost 200 years earlier; the 1846 British short story "A String of Pearls"; the first stage version by Pitt; the 1936 film starring Tod Slaughter, who changed his first name because he played the character so many times on stage; and Christopher Bond's 1969 stage adaptation, which offered a more serious approach and made the story about revenge.
Sondheim says that the most difficult number to write was "Epiphany," because all the subsequent action depends on the audience believing this song. According to Sondheim, the number shows a man's mind cracking, his moods constantly shifting, and Quilley's performance is riveting.
In "A Little Priest," Hancock sings a slightly altered lyric, "No, when it's as scrawny as poet, you don't always know it's deceased." Quilley marvels at how Sondheim switches from the demonic hatred of "Epiphany" to the demonic glee of the first-act finale.
It's worth pausing here to note that Quilley was a great champion of Sweeney Todd. On closing night at Drury Lane, he made a curtain speech in which he denounced those "ignorant journalists" whose negative reviews had sharply curtailed the run. Quilley returned to Sweeney when it finally became a London success with the 1993 National Theatre revival, first playing the Judge then shifting to his original title role, opposite Julia McKenzie.
For "God, That's Good," Sondheim discusses all that needed to be established in the complex number. He notes that he had planned to have the sequence spread over a room full of separate tables, but that Prince managed to stage it with just one. Sondheim shows how he plotted out the number, creating musical motifs for each principal character. He discusses the necessity of using motifs to sustain a piece, even though the audience may not be aware of them, and notes that virtually everything in the score is reused at least once.
Then it's on to Prince's favorite number in the show, the second-act "Johanna," which he says represents both Sondheim and Prince at their best. Quilley calls it an "extraordinary, dreamlike piece of macabre theatre."
Sondheim says the play is a tragedy, with Todd a tragic hero who must die owing to a revelation. The program, directed and produced by Alan Benson, ends with the finale, complete with Lovett and Todd rising from the grave on an elevator, and curtain call.
It has been said that this documentary ultimately did damage to the production at Drury Lane, and it's not hard to see why. The British had in the past tended to view the Sweeney legend as a horrific jest, and this special goes out of its way to demonstrate the serious, operatic approach to the material chosen by Sondheim, Prince, and librettist Hugh Wheeler. Sondheim's on-camera analysis makes the numbers seem so complex that potential ticketbuyers may have been scared away.
Others may have found the footage of the throat-slitting scenes a turn-off. Then too, the program's eighty-five minutes may have given away too much, offering quite a few of the musical numbers more or less complete, even if the footage blends rehearsal with live performance. Still, this is an invaluable program, one that, at a time of a radically different Broadway revival, makes a strong case for the original Prince production.