Love on a Knife Edge

This week I am besotted with Sweeney Todd - the film rather than the man, so you may relax; I shall not be going to get my legs shaved and returning legless below the knee, pursued by a short lady selling foot-burgers. ("Eat your own legs, Mrs?") Good thing too, for doubtless I would be quite unable to evade her, in my new semi-pinless state.


Anyway, it's been a long week of repeated viewings, because it's an admirable hairpiece. Of course it's pretty - it's Tim Burton - but it's also mordantly funny, with wit and a perfectly plotted tragic structure.

I myself think Mr Todd is much misunderstood; after all, he has had to put up with his own kidnapping as well as that of his nearest and dearest, false charges and imprisonment, deportation, the rape of his wife by the judge who framed him, and the fifteen year imprisonment of his daughter by said judge to boot. Obviously the whole family are quite mad, but encountering the moustache-twirling Judge Turpin would drive anybody to the edge. Much to my regret Mr Rickman did not sing in Latin about how bad he feels for letching after his ward while oggling her through a peephole in the wall, wanking and beating himself with a frayed and knotted rope - which I would have paid good money to see. (It's apparently in the original; I did not come up with that fine orchestration myself. Maybe I shall just pay good money to the New York Metropolitan Opera to see somebody else do it sometime. It's in the repertory.)


Unfairly, he metes out the same punishment to all; the innocent, the guilty of some small untruths, or the guilty as Judge Turpin, and this makes me feel a bit sad - although also shriek with demonic larffter as he does a lot of it while singing wistfully about how he misses his daughter.


And here is the true greatness of the piece; it is unreal. Some very serious things have been written about Sweeney and capitalism, social mobility and his failure to address his problems in a mature and 21st century way ("He has choices"). These rather miss the point. All very well to gloat on about how capitalism encourages people to poo on the heads of others, but it misses the point of what it does - which is tragedy. With a lot of dark comedy and sung counterpoint on the way. Really, you should see it.

This week has also been notable for its lack of Getting Out Of Bed and Getting On With It, so I am posting this just to prove to myself I'm still here. Apologies if it's rather pedestrian.