Stephen Sondheim has acknowledged a personal aversion to opera. Judge Trupin’s leering, lustful soliloquy, Johanna,begins and ends with a dissonant chord that Sondheim claims was used in every Herrmann score. The presence of the Dies Irae is evident, not only in the Ballad, but throughout the score. There are echoes of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Ravel’s La Valse, and the film scores of Bernard Herrmann. Sondheim has said, “what the show is really about is obsession.” Beginning with The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, the orchestra lines are filled with short, obsessively repeating fragments. The cast steps out of the drama to function as a Greek chorus in the recurring Ballad of Sweeney Todd, which delivers the earthy punch of early rock and roll. Sweeney Todd alternates abruptly between chilling terror and gruesome humor. Lovett, whose filthy pie shop was previously short of meat. A darkly symbiotic relationship develops between the demonic barber and his downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Along the way, Sweeney’s razor gets plenty of practice on other victims. The vengeful Sweeney is determined to get the unsuspecting Judge into his barber’s chair, where he promises to give the ultimate close shave. He was sent there on false charges by the corrupt Judge Turpin, who with the help of Beadle Bamford, tormented and raped Sweeney’s wife, Lucy. The action is set in 1845, amid the gloom and hellish alienation of rapidly industrializing Victorian London. The barber, Sweeney Todd, has returned to London from exile in Australia.
Stephen Sondheim’s grisly 1979 musical thriller, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, tells a story of blood-soaked, all-consuming revenge which ends in self-annihilation.
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