Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (73 page)

The reprise or return of a song, usually the return of a song from the first act in the second, is a tested, ubiquitous, and perhaps even invariable feature of the Broadway musical. In a previous chapter we have observed the replacement of “Buddie Beware” in favor of a reprise of “I Get a Kick Out of You” in
Anything Goes
in deference to Ethel Merman’s wishes. In another chapter we noted that
Kiss Me, Kate
, a show written by Cole Porter during the heyday of Rodgers and Hammerstein, implausibly reprised a song “So in Love” by a character who had no discernible opportunity to have heard it. We have also seen that the change of a word “
how
I loved you” instead of “
if
I loved you”
was momentous when it was reprised in
Carousel
. The next chapter will look at the frequent, systemic reprises of Lloyd Webber.

In his essay, “The Musical Theater,” Sondheim voices his skepticism about the effectiveness of reprises.
⁵²
For Sondheim, the fact that most characters change throughout the play necessitates at least a change in the lyric of a reprised song. Throughout his career Sondheim has found welcome opportunities to reprise the melody of a song, but never a situation where it was possible to reprise its lyric. This is why he objected to Rodgers’s desire to reprise “Take the Moment” in
Do I Hear a Waltz?
simply because the composer wanted the audience to hear the tune again (as was Merman’s rationale for reprising “I Get a Kick Out of You” thirty years earlier).
⁵³

In a double interview with Prince and Sondheim, “Author and Director,” the “author” commends the “director” who initiated the idea to reprise all the songs at the end of
Night Music
.
⁵⁴
Although in the end they were able to reprise only five songs (“Soon,” “You Must Meet My Wife,” “A Weekend in the Country,” “Every Day a Little Death,” and “Send in the Clowns,” plus significant underscoring of “Liaisons”), Sondheim found this device movielike and “very effective.” With
Sweeney Todd
, Sondheim credits Wheeler with the suggestion that he could base the final twenty minutes of the show on “little modules” of reprised melody. Although Sondheim may not have completed some of the unmusical portions of these twenty minutes to his full satisfaction, the conclusion of
Sweeney Todd
demonstrates an impressive use of earlier songs, mostly from the first act, whether as fragments or relatively extended segments, underscoring, or in combination with other modules.

The Final Sequence (Vocal Score No. 25-No. 29B), framed by “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” includes one brief interjection of the Ballad’s refrain after Sweeney’s failed attempt to kill Johanna at the end of No. 28. According to the stage direction, following a chorus of the Ballad (No. 25), the Company “transform themselves into the inmates of Fogg’s Asylum, which is now revealed.” In the early portion of the sequence these lunatics on the loose use and repeat the frantic new “City on Fire!” music no less than four times.
⁵⁵
In addition to the “Ballad,” Sondheim inserts significant returns of no less than eleven songs listed below (see “Thematic Reminiscences in
Sweeney Todd
” in the online website for a more detailed outline of thematic returns during this exciting finale).
⁵⁶

ACT I:
“No Place like London” (including Beggar Woman’s music), “Poor Thing,” “My Friends,” “Ah, Miss,” “Johanna” (Judge’s version), “Kiss Me,” “Pretty Women,” “Epiphany,” “A Little Priest”

ACT II:
“By the Sea,” “Not While I’m Around”

Each one of these reprises contains significant dramatic meaning and contributes to the propulsion of the final scene toward its tragic conclusion while at the same time sonically summing up what has come before. For those who have not already perceived the musical connections between the Beggar Woman’s music (“Alms”) and “Epiphany,” in the final moments her identity as Sweeney’s beloved Lucy is unmistakably revealed. The main musical connection is the pronounced half step shared by both musical lines, both of which are ultimately connected with the
Dies irae
. The connection is especially pronounced in the orchestral passage that follows the death of the Beggar Woman with the return of the opening of “Epiphany” and the return of the half steps on the word “Lucy” (Vocal Score, p. 352) when Todd realizes the enormity of his action. As Todd acquires this tragic understanding, the audience can see his potential as a tragic figure, if not necessarily a sympathetic one. The collision of themes Sondheim referred to in his initial plan then returns in full force as Mrs. Lovett sings “Poor Thing” against Todd’s latest (and last) “Epiphany.” Most strikingly, just before the reprise of “A Little Priest”—and her own death at the hands of Sweeney—Mrs. Lovett herself starts singing a fragment of “Epiphany” in counterpoint to the demon barber of Fleet Street.

Sondheim, discussing
Sweeney Todd
with Mark Horowitz in 1997, spoke of possible plans for a film of this show directed by Tim Burton, who “fell in love with the show when he was in London in 1981 and saw it ten times.”
⁵⁷
Not only did the composer agree when Horowitz summarized Sondheim’s often stated position that “film musicals usually don’t work,” he commented specifically with the pessimistic prediction that a film of
Sweeney
wouldn’t “work for two seconds.”
⁵⁸

Despite his lifelong love for film, Sondheim admires very few film
musicals
; of those which he does like, none are adaptations.
⁵⁹
Unfortunately, among the adaptations he found unsatisfying were the four films based on his own shows,
West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
, and
A Little Night Music
. In Sondheim’s view, the action in a film must “move forward constantly,” and this does not happen in these adaptations. For Sondheim, the theatrical convention of stationary singers, such as Tony and Maria singing “Tonight,” does not translate well into film. He also expressed some skepticism about whether a
Sweeney Todd
film would happen before the year 2099 since Burton needed time to finish
Superman Twelve
. Although it took another ten years (twenty-six you start from Burton’s initial binge on the London stage version), the musical film of
Sweeney Todd
finally appeared shortly before Christmas 2007. It was directed by Burton and starred Johnny Depp.
⁶⁰

Sweeney Todd
, 2007 film. Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) and Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) at the bloody conclusion of the film.

Like most of the musical films discussed in acts I and II beginning with the
Show Boat
adaptation of 1936,
Sweeney Todd
, and like most of the films with the exception of
My Fair Lady
and to a lesser extent
West Side Story
, the musical film
Sweeney Todd
does not attempt to present a faithful and complete version of its stage sources. In addition, for the most part, stage musicals exceed “the two hours’ traffic” announced by Chorus at the outset of
Romeo and Juliet. Sweeney
’s stage traffic is about three hours. Film musicals, whether original or adaptations from the musical stage, generally take Shakespeare’s estimated performance time more seriously. Burton’s film realization of
Sweeney Todd
contains even less than two hours of traffic congestion, 116 minutes to be exact.

In order to perform
Sweeney Todd
so succinctly, some material had to be cut, including some of the 80 percent that was taken up by music. Sondheim thus went into the
Sweeney Todd
project knowing that some songs would have to go, especially those songs that did not keep the action moving. For example, the Beadle’s “Parlor Songs” served the dual purpose of creating a diversion to keep this character from inspecting Todd’s basement and giving a tenor something substantial to sing in the course of an evening, but it slowed the
action and could be slashed with impunity in order to “shave” close to four minutes. Since the lyrical middle section of “Ladies in Their Sensitivities” was also removed, the Beadle’s vocal contribution to the film is greatly reduced. We have earlier remarked that Sondheim for a long time regretted not
adding
music for this scene with Mrs. Lovett in the scene with the Beadle.

Another cut was Anthony’s “Ah, Miss,” which appeared on stage between Johanna’s solo song “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” and Anthony’s “Johanna,” the show’s great love ballad. To create greater plausibility as well as a few minutes of film time, the Beggar Woman and her “Alms” music no longer welcome Sweeney and Anthony when they get off the boat in the first scene. Instead she sings her “Alms” when she stumbles upon Anthony in front of Johanna’s house (a more logical place for her mother to hover, although we do not yet know her identity). In some newly inserted dialogue after the “Alms” music Anthony gives her some money and the Beggar Woman in return informs the young man, who has seen Johanna in the upstairs window and is clearly smitten, that Judge Turpin is the owner of the house and that the young woman Johanna is his ward. She then warns Anthony of dire consequences should he pursue the beautiful ward in the window.
⁶¹

Before Rodgers and Hammerstein acquired control of their own film adaptations, stage properties were at the mercy of producers and directors who simply did not believe in the material and were given carte blanche not only to cut mercilessly but to add songs by studio composers. Sondheim’s contract allowed him the authority to approve or reject the proposed changes. Since he agreed with the premise that cuts would be needed whenever the music held up the action and that the film should be primarily cinematic rather than theatrical, Sondheim himself assumed the major role in the decisions of what to include, delete, or rework.

One of the deleted songs in the film, the Judge’s version of “Johanna”—a completely different song from Anthony’s “Johanna”—was also deleted in the stage version of the show and relegated to the Appendix of the published vocal score (although it appears on the cast recording and in the revised vocal score in its originally intended position). Prince either found the song offensive or thought others would object to the depiction of masochism and self-flagellation in the song and urged Sondheim to take it out. A few years later, however, Sondheim persuaded Prince to reinstate the Judge’s “Johanna” in the New York City Opera production (1984) and has continued to advocate its inclusion in future productions.
⁶²
In the film, the Judge’s perverted nature could be observed more directly in the privacy of his room where screen audiences watch as he fondles his leather-bound volumes of pornography and spies on Johanna through a peephole in the wall. Within a few seconds the film captures what it takes the Judge nearly four minutes to
sing, and although the Judge now has nothing of his own to sing, this is less of an expectation for a major character in a movie than on a stage.

Much of the material involving the chorus also vanished from the screen version, although some of this music, so important to the stage effect, found its way into orchestral underscoring. The most audible example of this non-vocal use occurs over the extensive Opening Title sequence in which “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” can be heard without either words or voices (there are, however, some chorus-like synthesized vocals during an orchestral climax). The orchestral vamp from the “Ballad” recurs throughout the film and contributes greatly to the melodramatic atmosphere. Other ensembles, including “The Letter” quintet, the “City on Fire!” chorus of Fogg Asylum lunatics, and a good slice of the “God, That’s Good!” pie, join the discarded “Parlor Songs” among the major deletions of act II.

In his interview with Jesse Green in the
New York Times
, Sondheim estimated that about 20 percent of the remaining songs were trimmed and “in all fewer than 10 of the stage show’s 25 major numbers survived substantially intact.”
⁶³
Add up all the time saved and the result is a leaner and meaner
Sweeney
approximately one-third shorter than its staged predecessor. When interviewed for a special feature of the DVD, Sondheim extends the 80 percent–20 percent ratio he offered for the first act twenty years earlier in “Author and Director” to encompass the entire show: “There are very few moments of silence from the orchestra pit in the show. I’d say the show is probably about 80% sung, 20% talk, but even the talk, about half of that, is underscored, and it’s the way to keep the audience in a state of tension, because if they ever get out of the fantasy, they’re looking at, you know, a ridiculous story with a lot of stage blood.”
⁶⁴

Burton’s
Sweeney Todd
gathered a lot of critical attention and audience appeal for casting the popular Depp, an enormously talented and versatile actor who had worked with the director on six previous films (e.g.,
Edward Scissorhands
and
Ed Wood
) but had never sung anything other than backup vocals in a rock band. Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of film technology, it was not necessary for Depp—or Helena Bonham Carter, who had never sung at all, in the arguably more demanding role of Mrs. Lovett—to be able to project in a theater or even to have to sing all the notes of a song consecutively with the correct rhythms and pitches.