Sweeney Todd is a man bent on personal revenge, the way we all are in one way or another, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the time he lived in, as far as I'm concerned.” However, Sondheim accepted Prince's vision as a different way to do the show, and as an opportunity to do the show on a large scale, knowing that small-scale productions could be done at any time. That's what the play's about to him Sweeney Todd is a product of that age. It turns out soulless, defeated, hopeless people. Said Sondheim, "Hal's metaphor is that the factory turns out Sweeney Todds.
However, Prince soon discovered a metaphor in which to set the show, making what Sondheim had originally envisioned as "a small horror piece" into a colossal portrait of the Industrial Revolution, and an examination of the general human condition of the time as it related to men like Sweeney Todd. When Sondheim first brought the idea for the show to director Harold Prince, his frequent collaborator, Prince was uninterested, feeling it was a simple melodrama that wasn't very experimental structurally. When Sondheim first played songs from an early version of the show for Judy Prince (wife of the show's director), she told him: "Oh God – I didn't know this was what was about. Sondheim has often said that his Sweeney Todd was about obsession – and close friends seemed to instinctually agree. Sondheim's version more carefully reveals the developing ideas in Sweeney Todd and Mrs. In the play, Sweeney Todd's mental collapse and the subsequent plan for Lovett's meat pies take place in less than half a page of dialogue, much too quickly to convey the full psychological impact, in the view of scholar Larry A. This pair of songs at the end of Act I was the most significant musical addition which Sondheim made to Bond's version of the story. Sondheim decided to pair one of the most nightmarish songs (Sweeney Todd's "Epiphany") with the comic-relief of "A Little Priest". Never before or later in his work did Sondheim utilize music in such an exhaustive capacity to further the purposes of the drama. The score is one vast structure, each individual part meshing with others for the good of the entire musical machine. Over eighty percent of the production is set to music, either sung or underscoring dialogue. Music proved to be a key element behind the impact of Sweeney Todd on audiences.
The music helps to give it that dimension.
Hal Prince gave it an epic sense, a sense that this was a man of some size instead of just a nut case. It was essentially charming over there because they don't take Sweeney Todd seriously. The effect it had at Stratford East in London and the effect it had at the Uris Theater in New York are two entirely different effects, even though it's the same play. I had a feeling it would be a new animal. What I did to Chris' play is more than enhance it. Sondheim felt that the addition of music would greatly increase the size of the drama, transforming it into a different theatrical experience, saying later: He was able to take all these disparate elements that had been in existence rather dully for a hundred and some-odd years and make them into a first-rate play.” He also infused into it plot elements from Jacobean tragedy and The Count of Monte Cristo. because wrote certain characters in blank verse. Sondheim once observed, “It had a weight to it. īond's sophisticated plot and language significantly elevated the lurid nature of the tale.
Stephen Sondheim first conceived of a musical version of the story in 1973, after he saw Bond's take on the story at Theatre Royal Stratford East. In Bond's reincarnation of the character, Todd was the victim of a ruthless judge, who exiled him to Australia and raped his young wife, driving her mad. The musical was, in fact, based on Christopher Bond's 1973 play Sweeney Todd, which introduced a psychological backstory and motivation to Todd's crimes. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd was a familiar character to most Victorians. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, a new play in 1865. The murderous barber's story was turned into a play before the ending had even been revealed in print. Set in 1785, the story featured as its principal villain a certain Sweeney Todd and included all the plot elements used in later versions. A story called The String of Pearls was published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846–47. The character Sweeney Todd originated in serialized Victorian popular fiction, known as penny dreadfuls.
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