December 2009
37 posts
“The barber himself was a long, low-jointed, ill put-together sort of a fellow,...”
– The String of Pearls by George Dibdin-Pitt
There are several well-documented contemporaneous...
(source)
True or False?
Sinister, depraved, monstrous … true? Was Sweeney Todd a real person, or was he an invented bogeyman? The character has gone from a minor madman in a 19th-century newspaper serial to the melancholy murderer in Stephen Sondheim’s beloved Broadway musical. His macabre career as a maniacal frightener of young and old has spanned two centuries, but is it grounded in fact?
For generations,...
About Sweeney Todd →
Stephen Sondheim believes that Sweeney Todd is a story of revenge and how it consumes a vengeful person. He has asserted, “…what the show is really about is obsession.”
Hal Prince believed it to be an allegory of capitalism and its selfish qualities. He described this theme as follows: “It was only when I realized that the show was about revenge…and then came the factory, and...
After nineteen previews, the Broadway production, directed by Hal Prince and choreographed by Larry Fuller, opened on March 1, 1979, at theUris Theatre. The show ran for 557 performances, closing on June 29, 1980. The cast included Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett (replaced byDorothy Loudon in March 1980), Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd (replaced by George Hearn in March 1980), Victor Garber as Anthony...
1825 - The French story of a murderous barber appears in Tell-Tale Magazine under the title “A Terrible Story of the Rue de la Harpe.”
1846 - Thomas Peckett Prest serializes the story, retitled The String of Pearls. It is published in one of London’s penny dreadful newspapers. (The title came from a necklace that Sweeney steals from one of his victims.) Weekly installments of...
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark...
Sweeney Todd is a character who first appeared as...
In the original version of the tale he is a barber who murders wealthy customers by slitting their throats, then pulling a lever while they are in his barber’s chair which, unknown to them, is fixed to a revolving trap-door, making them fall backward into the basement. But in many adaptations of the tale, the murdering process is reversed, meaning that he pulls a lever causing them to drop...
At last! My arm is complete again!
I want to do a tumblr meetup.
Does anybody live in or around New Hampshire? Like this post if you do.
"& I the famous Pirelli-a wish-a to know-a who...
ofloveandrazorblades:
who says dis?”