Friday, 13 March 2009

"You will drip rubies"

Part of the oddity of Red Nose Day is that, between the pallid comedy and gesticulating celebrities, there are appeals on behalf of those going through Capitalism's people mincing machine. The millions suffering malnutrition and woefully inadequately healthcare in the developing world are given their moment in the sun, between David Walliams dressed as a lady and newsreaders swearing. Communities who've suffered the sharp end of capitalism in our comparatively wealthy society are patted on the back and given some cash, then Adele sings one of her many 'hits'. As Gramsci said, the fact that people starve when there's no need should be of some importance, and certainly more importance than one day every however-many years affords it. With this in mind, I feel that the musical Sweeney Todd deserves further attention.



Most people (those of us who haven't done time in community theatre) have access to Sweeney Todd through Tim Burton's relatively successful recent film version. Burton's film is wonderful, building the Victorian London of myth, and making the correct decision to cast actors instead of singers. The central performances are great, with Johnny Depp managing to convey the absolute destruction of the title character's sanity, and his absolute numbness at the world around him better than you would expect from a man who's spent a large part of the last decade doing a rubbish Keith Richards impression for a living. Helena Bonham-Carter is absolutely endearing as Mrs. Lovett, making the audience sympathise sincerely with a character complicit in serial killing. The other actors are of musicals stock, and manage to varying degrees of success - I felt the urge to punch the actor playing the role of Anthony hard in the back of the head, whereas the boy playing the role of Toby sings and acts absurdly well for someone who's younger than some working socks.

I've avoided musicals, although 'South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut' is unaccountably my favourite film. The songs are too catchy, even when they're rubbish, the acting is generally poor (these people are usually singers) and they're always too long. However, comedy and music being my two favourite things, I've started to find them irresistable. My entry point (after South Park) was Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera, which is hilarious in a way that David Walliams couldn't even concieve - although you could argue his inexplicable performance as an incontinent woman in Little Britain series 3 derives chuckles from the horror of every day life, and the inhumanity of man to man (or, in Walliams' case, the inhumanity of himself to an imaginary old woman). Although Brecht was inarguably of the left, the Threepenny Opera shows the working class or dispossessed as either victims or bastards.


'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' fits the description 'left musical' better than the Threepenny Opera. It's more 'musicalish' than the Threepenny Opera, although, in fairness, I'm too ignorant to know whether musicals were a thing when the Threepenny Opera was written. Class antagonism runs through Sweeney Todd, as it does society, and gets expressed in the most brutal terms - there are two kinds of people, "there's the one they put in his proper place, and the one with his foot in the other one's face", and "the history of the world...is those below serving those up above".

The central metaphor is (sarcastic SPOILER ALERT!!) of a people mincing machine - Sweeney Todd kills his patrons and Mrs. Lovett makes them into pies. It's easy to forget, in these times, when our leaders declare their ethical foreign policies and boast of the sustainability of their economic models, just how much blood oiled and still oils the cogs of capital during industrial revolutions. The hideous indignities that left our country such a stable and prosperous place are wheeled out in turn. Child labour, slavery (in the form of the workhouse), deportation, hanging - all there, and what's more, there's Johnny Depp! The metaphor is hammered home - looking around London, Todd hears the sound "of man devouring man", and declares it the way of the world. Mrs. Lovett, as a small business woman, is nearly ruined by conscientiousness and legality, and only when she decides to embrace violence, do her pies sell.

Of course, these facts remain. While profit rather than need drives production, those below will serve those up above, and man will devour man. When faced with the philanthropic outreaches of the very rich, however well intentioned, we must remember that behind those distended stomachs are people - Presidents for Life, oil barons and associated bastards, whose bellies are equally distended through greed. Sweeney Todd is not going to end this injustice, but it has undoubtably given us some great tunes to hum while we imagine what we could and should do to end it.

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