“The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” (1979)
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd / His skin was pale and his eye was odd
He shaved the faces of gentlemen / Who never thereafter were heard of again
He trod a path that few have trod / Did Sweeney Todd
The demon barber of Fleet street
And what if none of their souls were saved? / They went to their maker impeccably shaved
By Sweeney Todd
The demon barber of Fleet street
A mug of suds and a leather strop / An apron, a towel, a pail and a mop
For neatness he deserved a nod
Before there was Sondheim, there was Christopher Bond, who in 1973 adapted the nineteenth century tale of the demon barber of Fleet Street who sliced the throats of his customers so his landlady Mrs. Lovett could make meat pies of their remains. No music. Straight play. Kinkier even than Sondheim’s musical.
When Players announced they were going to stage Todd, I had to audition for it. By then, I’d done a couple more things for them, as had Esther. She’d acted in a preview presentation of Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl and me in the preview of Other People’s Money.
I got the role and prepared for it, among other things, by playing the Todd soundtrack over and over again. It became a ritual for me. Every night before performance, I would play the soundtrack album or at least the parts of it that heralded Todd’s coming or his actions. Todd was the first play I’d been in, and one of two ever (the second was Lear), where the emotional demands of the role altered my behavior. I had to get away from Esther and Jeremy for a couple of hours before rehearsal in order to compress — not decompress– to pump myself up in order to step into the part at full intensity.
Todd was the second play where I got it right as an actor. (The first was God’s Favorite.) It helped that I was playing opposite one of the great players of local theater, Jane Metzger. Thirty years later, we’re still friends and she’s still acting and directing. Before the final performance, she gave me a mince meat pie and for the cast party, I brought a platter of steak tartare, uncooked raw beef with raw eggs, salt, pepper and chopped up anchovy fillets. I was the only one who ate it. I love steak tartare.
***
I met Jane’s husband, Paul, the first time the cast party. He came dressed as Don Quixote, complete with helmet, sword and buckler. He looked a bit like I thought Quixote ought to look so it wasn’t a stretch, just unexpected. I soon learned, however, that with Paul, anything could happen. Risk was always there.
Here’s Paul, standing beside me at a surprise party Esther threw for my fiftieth birthday. Jane’s in front, next to Esther.
Front row: Esther, Jane. Second row: Nick Sheldon, Sadieann Mazzotta (now Spear), Karen Cleveland, Henry Sullivan. Back row: Roger Cleveland, me, Paul, Roger Sullivan
***
One time, later, Jane, Paul, Esther and I drove to Cooperstown to see Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Glimmerglass Opera Company. Paul drove, a vintage convertible, and part way along, on a whim, he stopped and insisted that Esther and I sit on the ledge behind our seat as he drove. It was fun but scary.
As to the opera, I can’t render judgment. Glimmerglass sits on the edge of Otsego Lake: it relies on nature to heat and cool the theater during performances. We were there the last night of the season. It was cold. Shutting the doors didn’t cut it. I was freezing my toogers off. All I wanted was to leave. As a result, I don’t have a clue whether the opera worked or not and I haven’t gone back to listen to it so I still can’t judge it. It’s one of the few operas in the repertory to feature a counter-tenor as lead. Peter Pears, Britten’s longtime lover, was one himself and Britten wrote much music for him.
***
Two years after Todd, Esther and I were half of a musical cabaret group with Dan Fusillo and Cathy Lochner. After a year of performing, we ended up performing a solo show at the local Big Box theater, the Stanley, in downtown Utica. We performed lots of songs, the four of us singing in different combinations -four solos for each of us, duets (Esther and Dan, Dan and I, Cathy and Esther, Cathy and I), two trios (Esther, Cathy and I), and ensemble quartets. For our duet, Dan and I sang “Pretty Women,” from Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. What a beautiful song! But the Todd score is like that. The most gorgeous music rises while horrible things happen or are presaged.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Len Cariou and Victor Garber: Sweeney Todd: “Pretty Women”
MUSIC & ME 