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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter

          Sam Kinison once said “nothing is off limits when it comes to comedy”. Sweeney Todd, the story of a barber who cuts the throats of his customers with his razor and has his lover serve them up as tasty meat pies, goes to prove that no subject is so gruesome that we cannot make a musical out of it. While it seems like the brainchild of the producers of Springtime For Hitler, its creator is the great Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway legend who has given us such musicals as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gypsy, West Side Story, Company, and a couple of dozen other musicals. It was first performed in 1979 at the Uris Theatre in New York City. Maybe it is the macabre nature of the story, but writer Hugh Wheeler assured people that the tale is pure fiction, and that makes sense. Nobody would want to go to a light romp about Ted Bundy, tap their toes to the tunes of John Wayne Gacy, or hum some delightfully catchy tune about Jeffrey Dahmer wearing some guy’s backside for a hat.

          Yet, like Bill Clinton spinning a tale to a Hooters waitress, the claim is not exactly true. Based on the earlier plays by Christopher Bond (1973) and George Dibdin-Pitt, Sweeney Todd is the English bogeyman, a Freddy Krueger to scare little children. British mothers used to shake their finger and warn their children against misbehaving, lest Sweeney Todd grab them and serve them up as a nice meat pie. Yet, Sweeney Todd really existed. He was a real person who lived in 18th century London. Born in 1748, Sweeney Todd was the child of a couple of alcoholic silk laborers. Growing up in poverty and in the shadow of the Tower of London, beaten and abused, his parents froze to death when he was twelve when their love of gin was greater than their common sense when it came to the weather. Leaving their child at home, they went out in the coldest winter in years and never came back.

          The orphan was turned over to the local parish for training as an apprentice to a cutler aptly named Thomas Crook, a trade where the young man learned to make knives and razors. Crook soon had the boy engaged in petty larceny. Two years later, the young man was arrested and sent to the Newgate Prison for five years. It was there that he convinced the prison barber to let him be the soap boy. Studying the craft, at the age of 19, he was released back onto the public. He was soon applying his trade as a gypsy or flying barber, setting up shop where ever he could find space. While shacked up with a woman of loose morals, Todd cut the throat of a young man who made the mistake of sitting in Sweeney’s barber chair and telling him in great detail about the passionate evening he had the night before with the woman Todd was living with.

          Even though he cut the young man’s throat from ear to ear, he was never charged with the murder. Unable to afford a shop, he moved from place to place until he was renting next to the church at 186 Fleet Street. Underneath his shop laid long forgotten tunnels and catacombs that Todd used in his future crime spree. Cutting a hole in the floor, he was able to rig a trap door that would open when his unsuspecting patron reclined in the chair, dumping the poor individual into the basement below. A new chair would pop up, ready for a new victim. Those not killed by the fall were dispatched quickly with a razor. Watching their master’s crime were the young apprentices the church had put in his charge. One young man went insane under the pressure. Sweeney killed for money, but it is not clear how many people the “demon barber” dispatched before he was caught.

          He had to figure out how to get rid of the bodies, especially when the crypts began to overflow with bodies. This is where a new girlfriend, psycho Margery Lovett, provided the answer of the day! She was a murderer herself, having dispatched her first husband.  She liked the finer things in life and Todd could provide them. She ran a bakery, with the basement connected to the catacombs, and sold hot meat pies to everyone. Her pies became celebrated throughout London.

          Problems arose when the air in the church became ripe, which was strange considering no one had been buried there in many years. After months of putting up with the smell, church leaders began to investigate. Hearing rumors about what occurred in the shop, the police put 2 and 2 together. Going back down to the catacombs, they found the barber’s dumping ground. Body after body was piled on top of each other, half way to the ceiling. They then discovered the bloody footprints that led to the back of the bakery. Needless to say, customers were not happy to discover what they had been eating. After gathering enough evidence, Sweeney Todd and his lover were arrested. Mrs. Lovett confessed to her role in the crime and later poisoned herself in her cell at Newgate. Clothing and personal property of 160 different men where found in Todd’s house, but how many he actually killed remains a mystery. He took that secret with him to the gallows on January 25, 1802.

          Thus, the legend became a musical with some changes. Now Sweeney Todd is a London barber named Benjamin Barker, who was sent to prison in Australia by an unscrupulous Judge named Turpin, who wanted the barber’s wife. After years in exile, the barber returns to London under the named Sweeney Todd in order to gain revenge. He moves into a place above a pie shop run by a Mrs. Lovett, who joins him in his quest to get the Judge. Failing in his attempt to take the judge’s life, Todd goes mad and begins to kill people left and right. Mrs. Lovett’s failing business is saved when customers flock to her shop to purchase her pies made with the special fillings.

          As I have noted in almost every review of musicals that I have ever done, musicals are a lot like porno. The plots matter little. They are just an excuse for the songs.   All that is important are the musical numbers, but when Tim Burton is the director and Johnny Depp is the star, it is going to be very interesting musical indeed.  Throw in Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Helena Bonham Carter and you know that you are either going to watch one of the greatest implosions ever or a pretty darn good film, especially when no one in the cast is a professional singer.  So, how did Burton do?  All I can say is that it is a Tim Burton movie with all the weirdness that any film directed by him has. Moulin Rogue! was an MGM musical on acid.  Sweeney Todd is an MGM musical conceived in the dark recesses of Tim Burton’s mind.  It is great.

          I am a huge Burton and Broadway fan, so I loved the film and have only one criticism of it.  Audiences will have to wait until the director’s cut comes out on DVD to see Burton’s true vision.  Studio executives ordered massive cuts and editing after watching the director’s original version because of the severed limbs and throat cutting scenes.  They wanted a more family friendly PG-13 version of the story, (got to get that teenage audience!). No one bothered to stop for a moment and say, “You know, my teenage niece just loves that Stephen Sondheim music. Snoop Dog and 50 Cent have nothing on West Side Story in her life. If you believe that, I have a third Bush presidency to sell you.  This is a movie for older audiences, people above the age 25, and most of the time they don’t like the youngsters acting like idiots in the theater with them.  Maybe an R rating might be best.  It is a movie about a guy chopping people into little bits to make pies after all.  Because if I watch one more cell phone flipped out to see who just called him or her, or some bimbo texting her friend when I am trying to watch a film, I am going to get a knife and… hit the music.

Verdict: A Burton Film