“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark and a vengeful god.” With that, the title character introduces himself and prepares us for a macabre musical about obsession, revenge — and cannibalism. Composer Stephen Sondheim has called Sweeney Todd a “black operetta,” which could also describe The String of Pearls, the 1846 “penny dreadful” that introduced Todd. Such Victorian stories, serialized in cheap weekly periodicals, told lurid and sensational tales that entertained millions of working class men. In fact, Todd’s tale was so popular that a play adaptation premiered before the ending of the 18-episode novel was published.
However, Hugh Wheeler’s book for the musical isn’t based on that original version but playwright Christopher Bond’s 1973 melodrama, which presents Todd as the victim of a ruthless judge who raped his wife and exiled him to Australia. “It had a weight to it,” Sondheim said. Bond “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.”
Sondheim brought the idea to director Harold Prince, who was uninterested until he discovered a metaphor for the show, turning Sondheim’s “small horror piece” into an Industrial Revolution epic. “Hal’s metaphor is that the factory turns out Sweeney Todds. It turns out soulless, defeated, hopeless people. That’s what the play’s about to him. Sweeney Todd is a product of that age,” Sondheim explained. “I think it’s not. 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.”
With its massive set (which scenic designer Eugene Lee recreated from a Rhode Island foundry), the show couldn’t afford to travel for out-of-town tryouts, so it started previews on Broadway. “We never finished teching the show before the first preview,” actor Len Cariou recalled, “because the main set piece — the revolve — kept breaking down.” Despite continuing technical difficulties, the show was enthusiastically received when it opened on Broadway in March 1979, starring Cariou (Todd), Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Lovett), and Edmund Lyndeck (Judge Turpin).
“There is more artistic energy, creative personality and plain excitement in Sweeney Todd … than in a dozen average musicals,” New York Times critic Richard Eder wrote. “There is very little in Sweeney Todd that is not, in one way or other, a display of extraordinary talent.” The production was nominated for nine Tony Awards and won eight, including musical, book (Wheeler), score (Sondheim), actor (Cariou), actress (Lansbury), direction (Prince), scenic design (Lee), and costume design (Franne Lee).
Three months after the Broadway production closed, the first national tour began, with George Hearn, Lansbury, and Lyndeck. The tour was taped for TV and nominated for five Emmy Awards in 1985, winning three, including one for Hearn. The London premiere in 1980 starred Denis Quilley, Sheila Hancock, and Austin Kent and won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. The first opera production was at Houston Grand Opera in 1984, with Timothy Nolen, Joyce Castle, and Will Roy.
There have been several notable productions since then, including the first Broadway revival in 1989, directed by Susan H. Schulman, starring Bob Gunton, Beth Fowler, and David Barron. That production transferred from Off-Broadway, where it had an intimate design that earned it the nickname “Teeny Todd.” In 2004, John Doyle directed a regional British revival that transferred to the West End. That production was also notable for its intimacy: its 10 cast members played the entire show. It subsequently transferred to Broadway in 2005, starring Michael Cerveris, Patti LuPone, and Mark Jacoby and won Tony Awards for its direction and its orchestrations, which Sarah Travis had reduced from the original arrangements.
A feature film, directed by Tim Burton with a screenplay by John Logan, was released in 2007 and won the Golden Globe. It starred Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman. In 2014, the Tooting Arts Club site-specific production at Harrington’s Pie Shop transferred to the West End and then to Off-Broadway, starring Jeremy Secomb, Siobhan McCarthy, and Duncan Smith.
The original Broadway cast recording remains the best interpretation — and even includes Turpin’s haunting “Johanna (Mea Culpa),” which was cut in previews. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album and was selected in 2013 for preservation in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.
You can learn more about the making of the musical in Sondheim & Co. (1974) by Craig Zadan. For insightful dramaturgy, read Art Isn’t Easy (1990) by Joanne Gordon, who focuses on Sondheim’s lyrics, and Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals (1993) by Stephen Banfield, who focuses on music.
NEXT, explore the musical that Hal Prince led to Broadway just six months after Sweeney Todd had opened: Evita, with a libretto by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Among the two dozen English recordings, the 1976 concept album (Julie Covington, Colm Wilkinson) is worth a listen, but I prefer the 1979 premiere American recording (Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin), not the least because it has the entire score.
THEN, for another musical with an industrial-sized setting and scope, listen to Ragtime, by Terrence McNally (book), Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), and Stephen Flaherty (music).