Sweeney Todd - Design for Murder

 SWEENEY TODD
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Skylight Opera - Milwaukee, WI
Drawings, photos and scenic design copyright © 1997, 2007 David Maxine. All rights reserved.

One of my favorite design jobs ever was designing the set for a production od Stephen Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD for Skylight Opera in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the spring of 1997. The show was directed by Jonathan Pape.

One of the first Broadway shows I ever saw was the original production of SWEENEY TODD starring Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou back in 1979. I loved it! But as much as I loved the original I felt a strong desire to be different in mine and to stay away from the "spinning-cube" unit-set of the original. So without too much chat here's what I did.

Below you will see several scenes from the show. Each starting with my watercolor sketch (the first thing I showed the Director) then photos of the 1/4 scale model I built, then my production photos of the design in performance. Enjoy!

My set was a collage of old London building elements that could move up and down, appear or disappear. It was a two level set - with stairs on either side leading to the upper-level and another staircase - used mainly to get to the Barber Shop, just off center. There was a tunnel at center where a tongue-like platform could emerge dressed with props and furniture to provide the various interiors.

The picture above shows the opening moments of the show when Sweeney and Anthony first arrive in London. The center panel (with the window panes) flys up to reveal Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop. The pantomimed flash-back then occurs behind the window on the second level (as seen in the production photo below).

SWEENEY TODD - Sketch "Mrs Lovett's Pie Shop"

SWEENEY TODD - 1/4" Scale Model "Mrs Lovett's Pie Shop"

SWEENEY TODD - Production photo - "Mrs Lovett's Pie Shop"

As an experiment, I tried a couple sketches in purple. For a while I worried that the gray was a little too real and thought a brooding passionate color might be good to heighten the melodrama a little - but neither the director or I liked it. Below is a purple sketch for Johanna's first scene, "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" with Anthony emerging from a foggy London tunnel. The production photo below is a little dark - but the set basically matches the sketch.

SWEENEY TODD - Sketch "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"

 

SWEENEY TODD - Production photo "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"

At the end of Anthony's "Johanna" number, in the dark night time set pictured above, we finally saw all of the upper city-collage fly out revealing a soot-filled London cityscape. The city crowd pours in and young Toby marches across the upper level, he stops at center and begins to sing "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir." At the end of his long intro he he simply kicks the Pirelli advertising banner off the upper level and it unfurls over the tunnel opening from which Pirelli will make his imposing entrance a few minutes later.

SWEENEY TODD - Sketch "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir"

 SWEENEY TODD - Production photo "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir"

For the first part of ACT II I opened everything up. Sweeney is up top slitting throats, Mrs. Lovett is down below selling meat pies. The very large sooty-London cityscape drop in the photo above) was painted by me. As I remember it was 24 feet by 36 feet. It was begun by two local painters but they were not up to the task and when I arrived in Milwaukee, the drop was, well, a painting disaster. So I had to repaint it myself vertivcally (as opposed to flat on the floor) . Correcting a bad painting in the air is a lot harder than doing it right the first time flat on the floor. I made it look okay but it was a real chore to salvage that drop!

SWEENEY TODD - Sketch Act II

SWEENEY TODD 1/4" Scale Model - Act II

I have not covered every scene here, but this is a good sampling of one of my favorite design jobs. If you have questions by all means ask away!

Oh, I will add one thing. I was terrified the actors were going to ask me, as designer, to be the first person to be dumped from the barber-chair down the dark chute to the meat-room. Luckily, the Technical Director went first and I dodged the bullet.

I never did take the ride. Phew!

"Attend the tale of the scared designer..."

Drawings, photos and scenic design copyright © 1997, 2007 David Maxine. All rights reserved.

Slashing Sweeney Todd

Well, the web seems inundated with reviews of Tim Burton's film version of Sweeney Todd, some smart, many stupid. A friend in NYC said a bunch of goth kids came into the bookstore where he works and they'd just seen Sweeney. When they heard that the original Mrs. Lovett was created by Angela Lansbury the darling goth tykes responded, "Eeeww! That dumpy old woman! Was she the best they could get?"

Kinda makes a fella wanna move to France. . .

The original Stephen Sondheim Sweeney Todd opened in 1979 and it was my very first Broadway show. I got my chance to see it on a family trip to NYC when I was sixteen. It was only a couple months after Sweeney had opened and it still had the original cast of Len Cariou, Angela Lansbury, and Victor Garber. It really was extraordinary.

I have seen most of the important Sweeneys since: the New York City Opera version circa 1987 with Timothy Nolen and Joyce Castle, the 1989 Circle in the Square Broadway revival with Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler, the 2005 Broadway revival with Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone. And the video version of the Lupone/Hearn SWEENEY concert, and of course the Lansbury/Hearn video. Heck, I've even seen the old black and white non-musical British film The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), starring the amusingly named Tod Slaughter. I also designed a large-scale production of Sweeney for Skylight Opera in Milwaukee in 1997. Click Here for Pics and Blog.

Ok, now that my throat-slitting creds are established ...

I saw Burton's Sweeney on opening day and found it very enjoyable for the most part. I think it is probably Burton's best film since Ed Wood. I really wanted to like it and at the time I managed to convince myself that I did. I thought it looked really good. The smog-choked London of the 1840s was made quite real. Johnny Depp is certainly the right age and has the intensity to play Sweeney well, as does Helena Boham Carter to play Mrs. Lovett.

Burton has heavily cut the score for some unfathomable reason. At first I thought it was due to length, but on checking running times I found Burton's film runs about fifteen minutes LONGER than the full-length stage version does. Perhaps Burton truly wasn't up to directing a musical. I understand the reason for cutting the "Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd" chorus parts. They are a theatrical conceit, and a stronger opening could be created for the film without it. But omitting the Act I quartet is bizarre. It's crucial to the development of the score. And paring down "A Little Priest" makes it seem like Burton simply didn't know what to do with the song. Or perhaps Depp and Bonham Carter simply weren't putting it over.

Spoiler Warning!

In the film Depp's and Bonham Carter's voices seemed fine. But as I've listened to the soundtrack since, they both sound very tentative and like they are at an early read-thru of the score. There is just not enough character in their singing, especially Bonham Carter's. In her opening number, "The Worst Pies in London," she should be chewing the hell out of the song - yet it has so little energy, it is so flat. Somehow Burton has stripped all of the comedy from the song. It needs to be lived and felt and made spontaneous. Mrs. Lovett is a very poor woman trying to get by selling meat-pies. She is supposed to be delighted that Todd--"A customer!!"--has just walked in the door. Instead, Bonham Carter gives us a Mrs. Lovett that is so underplayed it becomes confusing. On the one hand she should be trying to make a schilling by selling Todd a pie and on the other she wants empathy as she admits her pies are disgusting and gross. This slightly schizophrenic point-of-view is essential to Mrs. Lovett's character. It is what enables her to rationalize her way into serving cadavers as entrées. This multi-dimensional quality is largely missing from Bonham Carter's performance. And to top it off, the lyrics are simply hard to hear and understand.

Alan Rickman makes a wonderful Judge Turpin. Indeed, he would have made a great Sweeney. Sascha Baron Cohen (and his manhood) ably play Adolpho Pirelli. Though again a comedic moment goes for naught when Cohen switches from his over-the-top Italian accent to his Irish accent. Why is nothing funny in this movie? Jamie Campbell Bower sings beautifully as Anthony the young sailor, but he looks so pretty and girlish that it's hard to believe he serves any purpose on a ship other than butt-boy to all the "real" sailors, and it seems more likely Johanna should be rescuing him.

Burton made an interesting choice in the casting Ed Sanders as Tobias Ragg. Toby is most often played as a rather dim-witted young man/teenager. Burton cast a little kid who comes across as about eight years old. He has a lovely voice and makes "Nothing's gonna harm you" sound really wonderful. This is no reflection on Sanders abilities, but a kid that age simply can't act well enough to carry his weight in the drama. An genuinely little child has no real chance of "protecting" Mrs. Lovett from harm; and in the final scene when Toby is exposed to the horrors of the bake-house and meat grinder we need to hear a cry of terror and pain that makes our blood grow cold. Young Mr. Sanders just yells, "Mrs. Lovett, let me out," like maybe he has to go to the bathroom really bad.

You may have guessed that I am not a big Tim Burton fan. I think he has a wonderful imagination and a strong personal style, but I have always felt he needed to be more tightly reigned in, that his ideas were too often brilliant first drafts that were never refined enough or thought through, that often his ideas were simply there because they were "cool" and if they made hash of the story-telling or characterizations, it seems Burton thinks, "Who cares, it's cool"! Here are a few of the most disturbing "Burtonisms" in the film:

The Opening Credits

It seems hard to believe that Burton will blow his wad in the opening credits by showing the audience the barber chair, the chute, and the meat grinder full of body parts. A good story teller would make the audience wait and build up the suspense. Why enact the plot in mediocre CGI animation before the film has even started?

The Tower Bridge

Moments into the film Sweeney goes sailing down the Thames under the Tower Bridge. The film appears to be set circa 1840, but the Tower Bridge wasn't built until 1894, some fifty plus years after the film takes place. Whether this was Burton's idea, or Production Designer Dante Ferretti's, it was a stupid mistake and makes both men look unprofessional. I have seen several other blogs online talking about this goof and a number of people seem to argue back: "But it's a musical! Since when does a musical have to be accurate? People don't sing in the streets either!!"

Well, that's not the point. It's bad because I wanted to be paying attention to the story and music and not be jarred out of my seat by architectural anachronisms. I don't want to see the Eiffel Tower on a backdrop for Les Miz either! Science Fiction films don't HAVE to be historically accurate, but if Peter Jackson had put the World Trade Center in his 1933 period-correct KING KONG because he thought it looked cool - well, it would have been stupid!

Passing Sentence and Key-hole peeking

To show the quality of Judge Turpin's character there is a scene where the Judge passes a sentence to "Hang by the neck until you are dead" on some poor prisoner in the dock who has committed a petty crime. In the show it's a young man and the severity of the sentence to the crime is considered sufficient to show the Judge's character. Burton ends the scene by pulling back to show the condemned prisoner is a little kid, possibly six years old, weeping hysterically. Ahh, subtlety.... In another scene the Judge watches Johanna through a secret peek-hole. It's in the original show, it's creepy, and helps define character. Yet for some odd reason Burton explicitly has Judge Turpin watch Johanna sitting in her window, engaging with the sailor and throwing a key to him. Yet later on when Judge Turpin hears Johanna has made these plans he seems to have no idea he watched it all himself earlier that day. The scene could have been solved by having the Judge simply quit peeking before Johanna throws the key. Go figure.

Little Bald Boys

Casting little kid Ed Sanders as Toby seems like a good idea when he's singing. But his big solo number is about his job selling a hair growing tonic and how he went from being completely bald to having a full head of hair. Hmmm .... I don't know many bald little boys, do you? It makes no sense.

The Meat Grinder

Mrs. Lovett's meat grinder is so over the top it seems ridiculous. It stands about seven feet high with an opening many feet across. Why? Where did she get a several ton cast-iron meat grinder? Huh? Also, Burton as usual must throw subtlety to the winds. In the show Toby finds some hair and then a fingernail in a meat pie, he puts two and two together, and figures out what's going on in the horrific bakehouse. In Burton's scene Toby finds a whole finger. It's just crass and doesn't allow the audience to make the journey and see the horror grow as Toby figures it out.

End Credit Music

The film ends with a bloody tableaux of Sweeney holding Lucy, both dead and bloody. Then the credits roll and we get an unimaginative jumble of music from the film. This would have been such a perfect place to hear "Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd." At the end of the credits Depp and Bonham Carter could even have risen from the dead, like they do in the show, for a post credit "Gotcha!"

It isn't a bad film. I will certainly buy the DVD. But it could have been so much better. Burton doesn't seem to understand that the comedic moments are there to let the audience catch their breath, to relax the audience, so he can scare them all over again. Sweeney needed to be a roller coaster ride of giggly gruesome humor and stark terror. Burton's Sweeney is very one-note. Burton has put his imagination into everything from the little bald boy to the six-ton meat grinder. It's in the CGI smog-filled London and the cockroaches in the pie shop. It's in the squirting blood and in the whole finger that Toby finds in his pie.

But here, perhaps, is the rub ... Burton's vision is so "imaginative" that nothing is left to the audience's imagination, and it's a shame Burton doesn't understand that that's where true horror lies.

Copyright © 2008 D. H. Maxine

When I think of Tom

I discovered a couple months ago that my first love, Tom Ladd, died on January 22, 2006. I found an obituary on-line and it said only that he had died of unknown causes. He was 44. I fell madly in-love with Tom in January 1985, when we were both working at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. I was 22; Tom was 23. Tom gave me my first real kiss, too. I hadn't seen or communicated with Tom for about twenty years. But I thought about him often and really wanted him to know how my life turned out. Tom was cute; but his magic power was that he just radiated sexual energy. One simply HAD to look at him, his face, his movements, he flirted with everyone, slept with many, and he just oozed sexiness. Here is our story. 

"Anything Goes!" 

In January 1985, I was working as a stagehand at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. On this particular day we were beginning two weeks of "tech" rehearsals for a large-scale production of Cole Porter's ANYTHING GOES! It starred legendary belter Karen Morrow as Reno Sweeney, Steve Hanan as Moonface Martin, Maureen Brennan as Hope, and featured Broadway veteran Justine Johnston as Mrs. Harcourt. Johnston may be best remembered today as "Old Heidi" in the original production of FOLLIES in which she sang "One More Kiss." I was one of about five permanent stagehands - but this production was bigger than anything the Guthrie had ever done - and they had hired an additional ten people to fill out our ranks. On this first day, we had an orientation meeting up in the balcony of the theatre; the stage was a-buzz with saws and screw-guns where the Carpentry Shop was building a three-story ocean liner! I was paying only slight attention when . . . my eyes scanning over the new stagehands when . . . "Who's that boy!" And thus, Cole Porter struck me gay!

Well, maybe I was always gay, but I certainly didn't know it until then. And I didn't know it as an irrefutable aspect of my being for another few weeks. I was twenty-two, I'd never been on a date, I'd never had a girlfriend, and I was waiting for the "magic" to happen when I'd meet the right girl and feel like a grown-up. But really, "Who's that boy!" This was Tom. He was almost exactly a year older than I was. He was about 5' - 8" and 140 pounds. He had sandy brown hair, blue eyes, a stunning smile, and he simply glowed with sexual energy. I know now that I was in love. But at this point, I was probably falling back on a repressed gay-boy's safety-emotion - "I want to BE him" instead of "I want to have sex with him." Over the coming days I discovered that Tom was gay. OH MY GOD! And that did the trick. I had to become gay, too, so I could have him. I didn't say anything about my new feelings; I didn't know how. But I quickly discovered that not only Tom but another couple stagehands were gay, too. As was the entire gang of chorus boys. And this was a Cole Porter show! My soul was suddenly being informed by Porter's double-entendre lyrics, scads of young men in sailor suits dancing their asses off from eight till eleven then changing into t-shirts and jeans so they could go dance at some gay bar called The Saloon in downtown Minneapolis for several hours more. 

"Blow, Gabriel, Blow!" 

During a break in the Green Room one-day, Tom was just beginning to eat a banana when one of the other gay stagehands said, "Is that for practice?" Tom, without batting an eyelash, said, "I dont NEED to practice." And Tom expertly deep-throated the entire banana and slowly pulled it back out. I was speechless, awestruck, and insanely in love. I became a love-sick puppy and followed the poor boy around. Luckily many of our assignments kept us together during the run of the show. One of my favorite moments was during Act II when Tom and I would have to wait in one of the Guthrie's downstage tunnels during the song, "All Through the Night." It's a beautiful song, and all this blue light would spill down the tunnel shaftway, and Tom and I would sit and wait for our cue - sometimes whispering to each other. I was nearing a point when I felt I could say, "Tom, I'm gay, too. I don't know what to do." 

"Break a Leg!" 

On Valentine's Day 1985, after the show had been open for about two weeks, we were presetting the stage about 6:00 PM and someone said that we needed to find a replacement for Tom. My heart stopped. Why isn't Tom gonna be here? In a few moments I heard the dreadful news. Tom had been hit by a car on the way to work that night. He was fine - save a broken leg. But he would not be back to the show. My ticket to homosexual joy was snuffed out by a speeding motorist on Hennepin Avenue. I was appointed by the cast and crew to assemble Tom's "get well" package. Yay!! I knew his favorite candy, drinks, and also added in the SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE cast album. I visited him in the hospital a couple times. Then he went away to recuperate. Tom did make it back to work the last few weeks of the show as ANYTHING GOES! proved so popular the run was extended. On Memorial Day 1985, I went home with him to talk and have a drink. I desperately wanted to sleep with him. Tom felt it was a bad idea - since I was so clearly in love with him - and for him it would just be sex. But he walked me part way home and gave me my first boy-kiss. I always thought it was a cliché about floating on air. It isn't! I wouldn't brush my teeth that night, either. I didn't want to lose even a molecule of Tom from my mouth. 

"But if, baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top!" 

About a year after we initially met, Tom and I finally had sex for the first and only time. It was okay. It simply meant too much to me - and not enough to him. I was so scared that it be wonderful that I made it mediocre. But he was glorious naked. He had arguably the most beautiful penis I have ever seen! Tom wanted to screw me but we didn't have any condoms and I wouldn't let him. God he was hard to turn down that night! I wanted him SO much. But I was a very good boy. 

"It's Delightful, it's Delicious, it's Delovely!" 

So I've now known I was gay for twenty-one years - slightly less than half my life. You know, I had an incredibly painless coming out. My family was cool with it. Within a year I would meet Eric, my lover, whom I've been with for a little over seventeen years. Eric's family is fine with everything, too. I wish I had tracked down Tom so I could tell him how I turned out. I miss him. I remember signing in on the Guthrie Theatre's call-board and suddenly Tom appeared, put his hands around my waist and said, "Hi, sailor, can I buy you a drink after the show?" Instant hard-on time, instant adrenaline rush, instant puppy love. 

Tom and I both loved musicals, too. He was jealous I'd just seen SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. We both jokingly talked about how we could have "saved" MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Tom introduced me to Carly Simon's TORCH album which had a stunning version of "Not a Day Goes By" on it. He introduced me to the the cast albums of BABY and LITTLE SHOP. I remember Tom's 24th birthday party and how he wore this incredible football jersey he had gotten from a previous boyfriend whose last name was Savage and whose number was 69. The very real football jersey said "Savage 69" on it. It was the hottest "get laid" clothing I ever saw! 

After ANYTHING GOES! Tom got a job as manager of the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. The Uptown was an independent movie/art house/revival house sort of theatre. Eventually he moved back to Chicago and we lost touch. Tom and I wouldn't have worked out. I was freshly out, a virgin when we met. Tom had been fuckin' like a bunny since he was sixteen when he'd been picked up by an old man of thirty-five at the supermarket. But I joked to him that someday, in twenty or thirty years, he'd be tired of screwing boys and he'd come to me like Frederick to Desiree in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. He laughed and said it sounded great! It was a fun fantasy. 

I always look for personal angles into songs and music I love. In "Hello, Young Lovers," from THE KING AND I, in which Anna is singing of her past, she begins the song with the line, "When I think of Tom . . ." and continues to tell of her memories and past love as she watches and sings "hello" to the newer, younger lovers. It's a melancholy song, full of ennui, full of love, full of gratitude and regret. "When I think of Tom . . ."