In brief, the show is about a barber who kills people with his razors for revenge. The music is fun and full of rich and varied textures, and this production, which originated in England's regional theater before making it in London's West End and then coming Broadway, is unusual since the ten actors also perform all the music. The scaled back, deconstructionist* approach encourages use of the imagination, and the simple set and props turn the focus onto the actors' expressions and movements. The Lion King had phenomenal costumes, but as a musical I enjoyed this one much more.
So, for Clay's birthday coming soon, I took him to see our second showing of Sweeney Todd in as many weeks! Here are a few pictures to give an idea of the show. It closes on Sunday, but there may be a national tour next summer.
* Deconstruction is a philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical oppositions (as between key terms in a philosophical or literary work) are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers. (www.m-w.com)
2 comments:
That's quite the overwhelming definition at the end of your post there....glad to see it was supplied by a dictionary and not yourself, because I gave up on understanding it on my second try.
MG
It means that any meaning that someone might attribute to any given thing (say the meaning of a word, the theme of an essay or movie) is dependent mostly on the observer, and that authorial or speaker's intent is relevant.
I LOVED Sweeney Todd - the barber from Fleet street, right? There was a production of it done during college at Rice.
Post a Comment