By: Kirsty,
on 1/11/2008
By Kirsty OUP-UK
How jealous am I? Last night Judith Luna, Commissioning Editor of the Oxford World’s Classics series was lucky enough to go to the European premiere of Tim Burton’s film version of Sweeney Todd in Leicester Square in London last night. She has very kindly written about her experience as a film groupie just for the OUP Blog. Allow me to hand over to her…
By: Rebecca,
on 12/21/2007
Yesterday, Robert Mack, the editor of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, wrote about the many incarnations of the tale. Today Mack looks at Sondheim’s version. This post first appeared on Powell’s.
Stephen Sondheim first came across the Todd story on a visit to London in 1973, when he saw Christopher Bond’s version on stage. Bond had made the story darker and less melodramatic than previous versions, in which Todd was portrayed as an increasingly paranoid homicidal maniac, who murdered simply out of greed. Bond was the first dramatist to provide Todd with a convincing, well thought-out, and fully integrated ‘back story’. At the beginning of the play, Todd’s anger is explained: it is directed exclusively at the local judge and beadle who together, many years before, had destroyed his career, transported him for life as a convicted felon, and (he believes) killed his beloved wife. Todd’s aim is revenge, pure and simple. Only after his initial attempts to do away with the judge and beadle are frustrated does he come to the conclusion that ‘the work’s its own reward’, and decides that until he has another shot at his enemies he will ‘practice on less honoured throats’. (more…)
By: Rebecca,
on 12/20/2007
Yesterday, Robert Mack, the editor of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, wrote about Dickens’s Influence. Today Mack looks the many incarnations of the tale. This post first appeared on Powell’s.
It wasn’t long before dramatists saw the potential of the Sweeney Todd story. In the same month that the final episode of the serialized novel was published in The People’s Periodical in March 1847, the first theatrical version appeared on stage under the story’s original title, The String of Pearls. Written by George Dibdin Pitt, it was the first version to use the catchphrase now most associated with Todd – ‘I’ll polish him off’. This was soon followed by another stage version in around 1865, under the title Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or, the String of Pearls by Frederick Hazleton. Meanwhile various other versions of the story were appearing in print, often either hugely swollen or greatly abridged, all using Sweeney Todd as the title. (more…)
By: Rebecca,
on 12/17/2007
Robert Mack is the editor The Oxford World’s Classics Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweeney Todd is the tale of an infamous London barber who partners with a pie-maker to do devilish things with his customers. Below Mack mulls over cannibalism. This post first appeared on Powell’s.
Have you ever noticed just how many cannibals there seem to be about these days? I don’t mean the real thing (well … not just yet, at least, although be patient; we will come to them in time). No, for the moment I simply mean: have you ever noticed the extent to which the actual language we use on a day-to-day basis itself remains to an extraordinary degree permeated by the signs or the lingering rumours of what might also be described as ‘lustful cannibalism’ — a common rhetoric of erotic possession and physical consumption? (more…)
