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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (often referred to simply as Sweeney Todd) is a 1979 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond .
Perhaps composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s most perfect score, Sweeney Todd is lush, operatic, and full of soaring beauty, pitch-black comedy and stunning terror. It’s one of the signal achievements of the American musical theater of the last 50 years, and it’s the high-water mark of Sondheim’s six remarkable collaborations with ...
It was probably written by James Malcolm Rymer, though Thomas Peckett Prest has also been credited with it; possibly each worked on the serial from part to part. Other attributions include Edward P. Hingston, George Macfarren, and Albert Richard Smith.
At the end of the century, George Bernard Shaw adopted the form for his The Devil's Disciple in 1897 and Passion, Poison, and Petrification in 1905. In Sweeney Todd, Wheeler and Sondheim updated this traditional form, adding musical numbers and a social consciousness.
May 31, 2019 · In Sweeney Todd, Sondheim, writing at the height of his powers, makes us anticipate almost every second of the show that something scary is about to happen.
He attended British actor Christopher Bond’s play about the 19th-century serial killer Sweeney Todd and was inspired to turn it into “A Musical Thriller.” He subsequently categorized it as “a dark operetta,” but also called it “a movie for the stage.”
In 1979, Stephen Sondheim wrote and produced Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street as a two act Broadway musical starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. The musical won multiple awards, including the Tony for Best Musical and was praised for its themes of
