Sweeny Todd - Wait For The DVD

[DonMike]

Luke, it is Johnny Depp with Helena Bonham Carter. It's trimmed down a lot from the stage musical but I thought it was wonderful. They had a really good sinister vibe to it, and both sang really well. Not quite the booming operatic style of the stage version but still enough to send chills down your spine.

[luke preston]

Thanks for that info. I'm a bit of a musicals junkie having written a few, directed some (inclduing Sondheim's Assassins and Into The Woods for pro-am companies) and even appeared in some so it will go in to my collection as soon as I can get it.

[DonMike]

Thanks for that info. I'm a bit of a musicals junkie having written a few, directed some (inclduing Sondheim's Assassins and Into The Woods for pro-am companies) and even appeared in some so it will go in to my collection as soon as I can get it.

You directed Into The Woods. Wow, that's awesome. That's one of my favorite stage musicals.

[DonMike]

Now you have me thinking about musicals. My favorite screen musicals are the Grease Trilogy. Grease, Grease 2 and Hairspray. Yes, I'm convinced that Hairspray is Grease 3. Except that the Pink Ladies and T-Birds are now the Corny Collins council and Tracy takes on the Sandy Olsson/Michael Carrington role of being the outsider who wants to become one of the cool kids and win the heart of the greaser who's stolen her heart. And you can even go so far as to say that Danny Zuko had a sex change and became a Baltimore housewife and Stephanie Zinone went on to manage a TV station, but that might be pushing it. If only they could have gotten Didi Conn to do a cameo it would have all been solidified, sigh.

[luke preston]

That's an interesting idea and one I'd not thought about before, Grease 3... Hairspray... hmm.

As for Into The Woods, it was only a local but big amateur company with some pros called in to cope with the big parts. Great fun though I enjoyed Assassins more even though I did have to play Sam Byk (forgotten how to spell it!) myself - at least he doesn't sing much.

Of course now living in the middle of nowhere I rely on DVDs for my theatre going and the last things I saw live were Jerry Springer in the West End and Sweeny with Jason Donovan in Brighton, a few years ago. Completely out of touch! Ah well, back to trying to track down a region 2 version of the original Sweeny (can only find region 1) and Woods.......