Springfield Arts Council’s Youth Arts Ambassadors production of
SWEENEY TODD - SCHOOL EDITION The Demon Barber of Fleet Street A Musical Thriller
Music and Lyrics by STEPHEN
SONDHEIM
Book by HUGH WHEELER
From an Adaptation by CHRISTOPHER BOYD
Originally Directed on Broadway by HAROLD PRINCE Orchestrations by JONATHAN TUNICK
Originally Produced on Broadway by Richard Barr, Charles Woodward, Robert Fryer, Mary Lea Johnson, Martin Richards, in Association with Dean and Judy Manos.
SWEENEY TODD - SCHOOL EDITION is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized materials are supplied by MTI.
mtishows.com
Any video and/or audio recording of this production is strictly prohibited.
Aimee Naah, Eve Choi, Terra Choi, Simon Kuss-Shivler, Finn Farr, Will McGraw
SWEENEY TODD - SCHOOL EDITION
SPECIAL THANKS *YAA Alum **YAA Parent
Katie Harford
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Thank you to those who joined us after our program deadline
Attend the tale ...
Though there was never an actual barber by the name of Sweeney Todd in Victorian London, various stories and legends exist of similar characters in dating back as far as the 14th centruy. These include stories of barbers who slit the throats of their clients and tales of butchers who committed multiple murders. The fictional character “Sweeney Todd” first appeared in a “penny dreadful” called The People’s Periodical in 1846; the title of the short story by Thomas Priest was “The String of Pearls.”
In Victorian society, the class system was divided into five groups: the royalty, the aristocracy, the middle class, the working classes and the poor. The poor were not seen as deserving and led a difficult life, even though they made up more than 1/4 of the population. They lived in poverty which led people down various paths. The streets of London were horrible in the 1700s. Horses (and their waste) filled the streets, people threw the contents of their chamber pots out their windows, and garbage was simply dumped into the streets. The foul runoff into the water supply was inevitable and people drank alcohol because they were, understandably, afraid to drink the water. Malnutrition, bad water, dirty food, bad hygeine and overcrowding contributed to the high mortality rate.
Just a year after the serial was published, playwright George Dibdin Pitt dramatized the story as The String of Pearls: The Fiend of Fleet Street. For a little more than a century after the first stage version, various adaptations appeared, including a 1936 film and a ballet in 1959. All of these versions had many of the elements we identify with Sweeney Todd.
In the original versions, Todd’s motive was greed. It was not until Christopher Bond’s version in 1970 that Sweeney’s motive became revenge for the wrongs done against him and his family. He is a victim of a social system that is ruled by those with money or positions of power. The audience could now feel a certain amount of sympathy for Sweeney.
Stephen Sondheim saw Bond’s London version of Sweeney Todd in 1974 and he was convinced that the material could be made into a musical. Sondheim’s original concept was to adapt the work into an opera, but soon abandoned that idea when he realized that he couldn’t get the piece to a reasonable length. In working with director Harold Prince, Sondheim found his inspiration in the Industrial Revolution and its dehumanizing impact on society. Hugh Wheeler was brought in to write the book.
Stephen Sondheim believed that Sweeney Todd is a story of revenge and how it consumes a vengeful person. He asserted, “…what the show is really about is obsession.” Harold Prince believed it to be an allegory of capitalism and its selfish qualities, describing the theme as, “It was only when I realized that the show was about revenge…and then came the factory, and the class struggle to move out of the class in which you’re born.”
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