Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I liked it, I didn't love it. I kind of feel guilty for not loving it because I know how much some other people would have liked to go see it, but I just didn't.

Basically, the feeling I had throughout most of it was that I would have really liked it if I hadn't seen the movie.

The play was exactly the same plotwise, (except for one small thing they took out in the movie), but it was executed in an incredibly different way.

The play was very minimalist. There were ten cast members (about), and no orchestra. When not acting, the characters would go sit in chairs on the side of the stage and play instruments, in clear view. They do stay in character though. Sometimes the characters would play their instruments while acting and having scenes and stuff. Tobias sometimes hides behind his violin, Mrs. Lovett took out a tuba and started playing at one point. And there were were no set changes. The set was a coffin, some chairs, a pedestal, and a big shelf that held stuff. They would sometimes move the coffin to reseble things, from a judges pedestal thing to a door. When they were showing that they were upstairs, some people would just stand on a ladder.

And the deaths were nothing like they were in the movie. Sweeney would just movie his razor past their throat, and then they would freeze, every light on stage would turn red, and somebody would start pouring a bucket of blood into another bucket somewhere else. Then the dead person would stand up, and a woman would come over and hand him a lab coat with dried blood on it.

It was very different. I didn't really love that they did it this way. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was more literal. Also it was a bit confusing I felt. Sometimes sweeney would carry around this white casket which after a while I realized was supposed to resemble random things, like his wife, the barber chair, a person he was shaving. The problem was sense I had already seen it in such a literal way, instead of enjoying it as it was I just kept thinking about where they were in relation to the movie. I think that was the biggest problem for me.

Tim Burton really changed the play a lot when he made it into a movie. It worked either way I think, but I wish I had seen the play first.

Also, one thing that wasn't in the movie. The play started out with a person in a straight-jacket gagged and twitching and moving his fingers a bit. Then a woman came out and took off the straight jacket. He then stood up and took up a violin and began singing "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" with the rest of the cast (another song Tim Burton took out). He didn't show up for a while, but he acted fairly crazy throughout the show (even though he wasn't in the scene really, he was just watching being an instrument person). He freaked out when Sweeney took out his razors and stuff like that. Later on he became Tobias (who is played by an adult on stage which annoyed me). Then at the end of the show, after he *HUGE GIGANTIC SPOILER STOP READING SKIP REST OF PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVN'T WATCHED MOVIE YET* kills Sweeney the woman came back and put the straight jacket on and she gagged him and he kept mumbling things like "put the meat through 3 times so it's extra tender". That was incredibly creepy, I liked that part of Tobias. Also the woman who gagged him and stuff was the one who would bring out the bloody coats for people when they were dead, and she was also Perelli. That was one thing I really liked that Tim Burton took out.

And here is my feelings on the preformances in short.

Sweeney: Eh, not great. He was not a very good singer usually, and his acting was not great. For a while it seemed like he was trying not to smile, and I don't know if it was on purpose or not but it didn't come off as creepy, it just came off as weird.

Mrs. Lovett: Very very good. She was the standout of the play (It seems like Mrs. Lovett is always a stand out, shes just a really good character.

Anthony: Pretty good. Not a stand out, but there was nothing wrong with his preformance.

Johanna: Also pretty good. She had pretty dark hair though, which drove me crazy because her having "yellow hair" is constantly mentioned and actually a important point in the plot.

Beggar Woman: Very good

Tobias: Pretty good

Nobody else stood out to me.

Also, one last thing. There were mike malfunctions. It was very distracting, Sweeney's mike stopped working for like half a song. I imagine it must have been awful for everyone else sense it was bad for me and I was in the third row.

Oh one more thing I just remembered, *SPOILER* at the end when he kills Mrs. Lovett he didn't throw her into a fernace! He slit her throat, and it was a lot more clear he was going to do it, with a slower build up. I prefered it when in one instant he just threw her into the fernace.

So overall, it was a very good production but, but due to my knowing the plot very well and having already seen the movie, I didn't love it.

Production: 8.5 or 9 crazy barbers out of 10

My opinion: 6.5 or 7 human meat pies of out of 10