Last night I felt inspired to watch a movie made from Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd" and I honestly must say I was truly surprised - shocked even - with everything. I know Sondheim of course as a Broadway genius but for some reason I was not familiar with this particular story.
What a strange, bizarre story this is - worlds away from what I imagined Sondheim musical would be - its roots are deep in 19th century pulp fiction that used to be published in chapters that would thrill newspaper audiences back than and there is something so strongly chilling and repulsive in subject that it survives time and lives on in various disguises on theatre, radio, stage and screen to this day. Tim Burton is clearly inspired with this story about revenge-turned-obsession, cannibalism and social injustice - the sets are magical (London never looked so grim and horrifying) and even though the stars are not really singers, they pull it off because its not about singing really anyway. The story itself is so fascinating that music is actually in the background here, it was not until I finished watching that I realized Burton had cut of a lot of original music and he had focused more on visual spectacle, a grotesque, dark and disturbing vision of true horror. I was repulsed and couldn't take my eyes off the screen to the end. Fascinating.
As opposite to Tim Burton screen adaption, original 1979. stage cast album is a truly Sondheim work trough and trough - where Burton wallows in visual effects, blood spurting and dark skies, this recording is all about acting, talk-singing and music that suggest everything. I must confess that naturally this is very enjoyable once I had seen the movie so now I can place songs in their contest. Stephen Sondheim is a genius and this is probably the most completely perfect work I have heard from him so far, everything is done by perfection and there is a lot of fascinating little details, leitmotif, strange harmonies and almost operatic sweep that probably works excellent on a stage. Singers are much better than in a movie version - again, it is not about a beauty of voices but about expressiveness and wink & nudge that poke the listener all the time. This original cast was showered with all kinds of awards, including "Tony" for Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury and their director, outstanding musical of the year and so on. Its funny how even with this grim, horrifying story I found myself humming along to "Pretty Women" and "Not While I'm Around", two songs that shine the most out of their original roots and had lived on trough countless other versions since.
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