I have to be honest and admit that I have lived a very fortunate life so far. My health is good. I have found true love. I am father to two wonderful young women. My financial health is sound. Finally, I have lived the vast majority of my days in complete peace. It is this last statement that I wish to explore a little before launching into today’s post. Some people that I know always seemed to be in the middle of one incident or another. Not me. My last fight happened in grade school and it was actually more of a chicken dance of arms flailing and voices clucking that it was a bout with serious violence intended. Since then, I have never had to take up arms against another person. It is not that I am living fearfully in the shadows, either. It is simply that I have created a social network of people with whom I get along, as well as having armed myself over the years with many non-violent strategies that allow me to get what I want and need without having to resort to fisticuffs. However, having said that, I do find myself wondering, from time to time, how I would respond to a formal violent challenge today. I am a man, after all. Regardless of how gender roles may have evolved over the course of my life, I would still be expected to be the one to defend myself, my family and my property from any external threat. What would people think of me if something happened that caused me to resort to violence as a solution? Would that change how I was viewed? Would it taint my reputation? If someone ended up being assaulted or even killed, would I go down in history as a criminal, despite having lived such a peaceful, exemplary life? I think about these things sometimes, and I am not alone in those thoughts. The whole character of Sweeney Todd is based on events similar to those mentioned above. The story told about the obsessive nature of revenge that changed Todd’s life forever is one that, for the grace of God, could easily apply to me or to any one of you good people who are reading these words. We live our lives based on the notion of peacefulness and order. But what would we actually do if evil entered our lives from beyond our front doors? This is the story of Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
The character of Sweeney Todd is one of the oldest characters in modern literature. Sweeney Todd first appeared in the mid-1800s in a story called “The String of Pearls” that was featured in a publishing format of the day known as Penny Dreadfuls. Penny Dreadfuls were a cross between what we would regard as comic books and magazines such as The Reader’s Digest of today. It was one of the first ways that publishers sought to get written stories in the hands of ordinary citizens in a large circulation kind of way. The content of the first Penny Dreadfuls was what we would call true crime stories today. For a penny, readers in London (usually male working class types) could read the latest chapter of some of the most lurid tales imaginable. The story called “The String of Pearls” definitely qualified as a lurid tale of true crime. It was told over the course of twenty weeks or so and helped place the character of Sweeney Todd up there alongside others such as Dick Turpin as the most popular literary characters of the day.
The plotline of Sweeney Todd is the story of how a peaceful man’s life is torn asunder after a powerful judge casts covetous eyes upon his wife. The man, Benjamin Barker, is arrested on trumped up charges and sent away to a penal colony in Australia. While Barker is away, the judge goes after his wife and claims his prize by raping her. Barker escapes from jail and returns to London in disguise as a man named Sweeney Todd. He has returned to save his wife and exact revenge upon the judge. Immediately after leaving his ship, he is approached by a beggar woman on the docks. She recognizes him as Barker but he shoos her away and heads into the city to construct a new life and set his plans into motion. The first thing he needs to do is to find a new place to live, as his original home has been taken away in the judgment against him by the judge. Todd’s search for a dwelling takes him to the shop of a meat pie maker named Mrs. Lovett, who is experiencing hard times due to poor pie sales from a scarcity of meat. She recognizes him as Barker, too. Mrs. Lovett pledges to keep his secret and tells him that his wife poisoned herself by taking arsenic after what happened to her with the judge. She further tells him that his daughter was taken in by the judge as an orphan and is now his ward. Needless to say, Mr. Barker, who had worked so hard to return to London and save his family, is heartbroken and angered in turn. And as of this point, he hadn’t done anything wrong yet, either. That was soon about to change. When violence enters your life, things can escalate quickly and can spiral completely out of control if one is not careful. This is what ended up happening to Mr. Benjamin Barker once he was in the guise of Sweeney Todd. Without going into every single gory detail, what ends up happening is that Barker and Mrs. Lovett both have a mental breakdown that manifests itself in a murder spree for the ages. What begins as a story of revenge quickly escalates into a crusade to rid the streets of London of undesirables who are killed in Todd’s barber chair, their bodies disposed of by turning their flesh into the meat that goes into Mrs. Lovett’s pies. Eventually, the amount of killing being done spirals completely out of control, only ending when Barker, as Todd, kills the original beggar woman who approached him at the docks when he first arrived. That beggar woman turned out to be Barker’s wife. As things were revealed, Barker learned that his wife had had a complete mental breakdown after the loss of her husband and her rape at the hands of the judge and ended up out on the streets as a beggar woman. If only he had recognized her when he first set foot off of the ship at the docks, none of what followed might have happened.
The story of Sweeney Todd remained in its initial form for over a century until the 1970s when it was made into a play by a man named Christopher Bond. This play was simply called Sweeney Todd. Mr. Bond was the first to slightly alter the story line of “A String of Pearls” by introducing the backstory of Benjamin Barker, which helped to explain why he went on such a homicidal rampage. The next adaptation to the story came when Stephen Sondheim and his professional collaborator Hal Prince decided to turn the dramatic story into a musical. In Sondheim’s view, the story of Sweeney Todd and the dramatic arc the plotline follows seemed almost operatic in tone. Thus, Sondheim and Prince set about to create a musical score that served the same function as opera scores did in times gone by. The seriousness and suspense of the original drama was kept intact, but instead of the actors speaking their lines, now they sang them. Canadian actor Len Cariou was hired to play Sweeney Todd. Screen star Angela Lansbury was hired to play Mrs. Lovett. Initially, Lansbury refused to sign on as a member of the cast because, as a big star, she didn’t feel that it was right for her to be expected to take on a supporting role. To assuage her concerns, Sondheim decided to create a song specifically for her that would push her character to being an equal co-conspirator to that of Sweeney Todd. Sondheim did this with a song called “A Little Priest”. This song highlights the moment in which Mrs. Lovett suffers her mental breakdown by deciding that the solution to her business woes was to harvest the flesh of Todd’s victims as the meat for her pies. Once Sondheim realized the powerful nature of Mrs. Lovett’s transformation, he immediately understood that Todd’s character required a song that explained his transformation, too. Thus, Sondheim created a song specifically for Cariou that was called “Epiphany”. Both songs played back-to-back at the end of Act 1. The addition of these two songs helped to allow the audience into the minds of both main characters and helped them to understand how the stress of loss (Barker’s family and his own life) or impending loss (Lovett’s business) can result in mental illness manifesting itself in ways that would have seemed impossible to contemplate just a short time ago. The inclusion of these songs helped elevate the musical in such a profound way that it swept all of the major Tony Awards (Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Musical Score, Best Set Design, etc) in 1979. Thus, Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street went on to become one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time. It is currently being re-staged with actor/singer Josh Groban playing the part of Sweeney Todd and Annaleigh Ashford starring as Mrs. Lovett.
Not all musicals have to have happy endings nor be about bright and cheerful things. Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the perfect example of a grisly story serving as the foundation for a multi-layered, intellectually complex drama that serves to illustrate how close to the edge all of us truly are. However having said that, depending on the ideas possessed by the director of any particular version of the musical, Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street can also be played for laughs, in a campy style that elicits laughter from audiences where once there were only gasps. *In the links below, I will choose videos that highlights both takes on the story. You can decide which style you prefer and let me know in the comments below if you so desire.
It is my fervent hope that I never have to find out how I would respond to an external threat to myself, my family or to my property. Living a peaceful, quiet existence is just fine by me. As someone who practices non-violence as a fundamental part of his life, I don’t ever want to find out what my dark side is capable of doing in extreme situations. And believe me, we all have our dark side. So far in life, I have done a good job of keeping it locked way down deep inside of myself. That’s where it needs to stay.
The link to the video for the trailer for the musical Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street can be found here. ***Movie version is shown.
The link to the videos for the songs “Epiphany” and “A Little Priest” from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street can be found here and here. ***The lyric versions are here and here. NOTE: Lyric versions are from the movie version of Sweeney Todd.
The link to the official website for the musical Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
Can’t ever imagine you , such a kind fella ever resorting to violence . But I’m sure Sweeny Todd never thought he would either ❤️
Excellent story !
When push comes to shove, one never knows what we are capable of . I hope to never have to find out but secretly I have been preparing myself. As a parent of teenage daughters, I hope they choose good boyfriends. But if they don’t and trouble enters our world, one needs to be prepared.