Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I think it is.

How's that feel to it? Will the musical be Sweeney Todd?

We're not guessing the musical.

We're guessing the person's name.

No, it's not Sweeney Todd.

It's not musical Sweeney Todd.

Okay.

American?

Someone had-

... actually watched George Hearn and Angela Lansbury's Sweeney Todd.

Me too.

With little parts.

the direction that Julie Taymor did take-

Mm-hmm

... is I'm echoed to an interview with Jackie Maxwell a- about her 2016 production of Sweeney Todd at the Shaw Festival that I got to see.

Yeah.

I love to read, obviously.

I've got my original Sweeney Todd record up there.

I love culture and I love art because of what it says.

I would rather read a novel than read a history book.

But then I'm getting ready to do a new production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for Dance Kaleidoscope in Indianapolis next fall.

And then after that, I have some other other things that are sort of in the works.

We're sort of in the middle of doing an adaptation of Sweeney Todd based on the Penny Dreadful.

These classic texts, these beautifully constructed pieces of art, like Frankenstein.

In our second season, in Signature's, even before its original space, Signature was performing at a place called Gunston.

And we did a production of Sweeney Todd that was extremely well-received.

It won all these Helen Hayes Awards.

That was back 35 years ago in 1991.

But just directing Sunday in the Park with George, Passion, Into the Woods, Now Merrily.

I'm sure there are others and they're all escaping me.

But like I have also choreographed Company and Sweeney Todd I've choreographed.

And so I've had and staged concerts of Saturday Night and did a big concert of his work that we created with David Loud along with his guidance before he passed away of Simply Sondheim.

Yeah, yeah.

I really want to play Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd.

Right, yes, right.

But I'm willing to just wait until it's the time.

That was Bad Cinderella year.

That was the Sweeney Todd parade year.

And Into

the Woods, was that also that year? I don't

It was that

year, August 6th.

We had all three of those revivals the same year, Into the Woods, Parade, and Sweeney Todd.

What a year we had in 2022, 2023.

Yeah, that maybe get done a bit, you know.

But the rest of them, things like Pacific Overtures or even Sweeney Todd, you know, they're massive.

Sweeney Todd can seat as a show.

We're going to do this American composer, lyricist is going to do this gothic horror, English show with an American cinematic landscape score, which also has like musical moments and it doesn't work.

Dark and

Now, we have in the studio our next guest with us.

We've got two of the performers, well, the artists that are in the show, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Fleet Street.

I know.

the eyes.

You can't see it, but I'm eyeing him.

Well, Sweeney Todd is based on a Penny Dreadful story, which was almost like kind of like the 1800s version of like Pulp Fiction novels that they would publish.

And it was this sort of story about this murderous barber who would kill his clients.