Sweeney Todd - the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I remember seeing this years and years ago at the Moorpark Melodrama in Thousand Oaks, California. Certainly one of the darker musicals you could ever hope to see in your lifetime, but presented in with a light touch (to a certain extent anyway). I got a big kick out of how Sweeney managed to eject the bodies through a small hatch on the stage. I wanted to go through that hatch myself. Keep in mind; I was about 10 years old at the time. After all these years, I still have very vivid memories of the play and having seen it at one of many theaters my parents took me to when I was young. Now we have Tim Burton's version of the famous musical by Stephen Sondheim which brings to mind a Klingon proverb:

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street" marks the sixth collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, and they are perfectly suited to Sondheim's dark and tragic tale of a wrongfully accused man who comes back after years in prison with nothing but revenge on his mind. Sweeney, played by Johnny Depp, was a husband and father who was framed by the devious Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who wants Sweeney's wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly, although I thought at first it was Kate Hudson), all to himself. Now that Sweeney is back in town, he plans to take his revenge not just on the Judge, but on the "vermin" that inhabit London in general. He does that with the help of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) who runs a dreadful pie shop, and she cannot hide how bad her pies taste from even herself. However, as Sweeney takes his bloody revenge (and let me emphasize that it is a very bloody revenge indeed) on his unsuspecting customers, Mrs. Lovett grinds their deceased bodies into meat that she bakes into a new set of pies that suddenly turns her dilapidated restaurant into the biggest hot spot in town. These are unsuspecting customers of a whole other kind.

Suffice to say, both Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett have quite a bit of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus in them.