<center>Gore! Lust! Cannibalism!
Sweeney Todd
Official Site
Trailer</center>
Stephen Sondheim's horror musical Sweeney Todd is now a movie directed by Tim Burton! It stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd and Helena Bonham Carter (Burton's children's mother) as Mrs. Lovett. Also features Alan Rickman as the villain, Judge Turpin.
Depp and Carter have not only been in many of Burton's previous films (Depp played the title character in Edward Scissorhands, Carter was prominant in Big Fish), but they have both worked together in one (they provided voices for the main characters of The Corpse Bride). Carter has also been in a film with Rickman, she was Bellatrix Lestrange and he was Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Sweeney Todd is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book written by Hugh Wheeler. It premiered on Broadway March 1, 1979 and closed June 29, 1980. It starred Len Cariou as Sweeney and Angela Lansbury as Lovett, and together they won Best Actor and Best Actress. The book and score and the musical itself got Best Book, Best Score, and Best Musical, respectively. Some consider it an opera, because it is almost completely sung-through and has been in a few opera houses aside from the regular stage. It most recently had a revival on October 3, 2005 but ended September 3, 2006.
Sweeney Todd is based on a Victorian horror novel "The String of Pearls". The story has been changed since the original novel, but Sondheim and Wheeler saw a stage version, "Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street", and it was that version that inspired their musical. The story is of Benjamin Barker, a barber who lives happily with his wife and baby daughter, until the lecherous Judge Turpin exiles Barker from London and from his family, accused of crimes he didn't commit. Benjamin Barker's unjust jailing and deprival from his family transforms him into a new man with a new name. Sweeney Todd returns to London many years later, and discovers from Mrs. Lovett, a poor woman who makes meat pies, that the judge raped his wife, causing her to kill herself, and took his daughter, Johanna, captive. Sweeney Todd swears revenge on the judge, and takes his rage out on all the men of London who come to him for a shave. He uses his razors to exact his revenge, as well as Mrs. Lovett's meat pies...
