Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (play)

Transferring stage plays to the movie scene is a tricky process and sometimes the only way to see the true vision of the play is to see it on the stage. Some of the great plays of the past few decades have been released on video tape and DVD, and when the opportunity arises your able to see the original against the movie version. Here the extremely successful stage version of Sweeney Todd starring George Hearn as Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett is preformed on the London stage for an audience and film crew. With the haunting score by Stephen Sondheim the story of the demon barber comes to life on the stage and just draws you into the world of old London.
After the wrongly imprisoned barber Benjamin Barker returns to London under the name of Sweeney Todd, he begins his insane revenge on the two men who ruined his life and the populace surrounding his shop. Seeing this play in the context of the stage is a treat that you don't get a chance at very often, after plays have had their run its rare that they're viewed by an audience the same way again. Here the use of changing stage props and scenes with imaginary walls between the actors gives the audience a true feeling of how this story was to be seen. Even though the horror part of the story is pretty gruesome, the dead bodies being ground into meat pies to be sold to the public, its done in such a humorous way that your left laughing at the situations. The Sondheim score for this story carries so much of the story from scene to scene that the music becomes a living character within the tale.
The Tim Burton version that is available on DVD is based on this version of the play, even some of the songs are taken from the play. Yet here you see the richness of the story and how captivating it is from the audiences viewpoint. With top notch performances by the entire cast it is easy to see why this story enthralled so many people and became an instant success, and its surprising that it took so long for a big screen version to be made. So if you get a chance take a look at this version of the tale and see if how it was meant to be seen, on a stage with the actors pouring out the hearts.