"Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubliate,
Sitting in cages,
Never taking wing?
Outside the sky waits,
Beckoning, beckoning,
Just beyond the bars.
How can you remain,
Staring at the rain,
Maddened
by the stars?
How is it you sing
Anything?
How is it you sing?..."
"I started it, trying to write everything myself because it was really all going to sung... It was going to be virtually an opera. I did the first twenty minutes and I realized I was only on page five of Bond's script. So at that rate, the show would possibly have been nine hours long."
-Stephen Sondheim
Sweeney Todd, billed as a musical thriller, is based on the Christopher Bond play concerning a barber (Sweeney Todd AKA Benjamin Barker), who seeks revenge on first, the judge who imprisoned him and kept his daughter as a ward (Judge Trurpin), and then all of mankind as he, and his accomplice, Nellie Lovett, bake their victims and serve then up in her pie shop in 19th century England.
Sweeney Todd opened March 1, 1979 at the Uris Theatre where it ran for 557 performances. It closed June 29, 1980. Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim ;
Book by Hugh Wheeler ; Produced by Richard Barr, Charles Woodward, Robert Fryer, Mary Lea Johnson, Martin Richards in association with Dean and Judy Manos
and Directed by Harold Prince. Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Book (Hugh Wheeler), Best Score (Stephen Sondheim), Best Actor in a Musical (Len Cariou), Best Actress in a Musical (Angela Lansbury ), Best Director (Harold Prince), Best Scenic Design (Eugene Lee) ,Best Costume Design (Franne Lee).
Synopsis
Song-Cast list
2005 Revival
2005 Revival Synopses
Shows
