I'm still kinda obsessed with Sweeney Todd. As in, I spend most of my work days listening to the Broadway soundtrack (Len Cariou/Angela Lansbury) on infinite repeat.

So another thing I knocked off my to-do list yesterday was watching the VHS of Sweeney Todd that off_coloratura loaned us. This was the 1982 TV version, with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury, and it was a fairly low-frills taping of a stage performance. There were some close-ups and a few carefully planned camera angles, but much of it was just pan-and-scan following the performers around the stage in medium shot. So not very cinematic, but fairly you're-in-the-front-row-at-the-show.

And… man. It was really interesting to see how the staging worked on some things, such as Todd's murders and how his automatic chair dumped people into the bakehouse, but at the same time, the performances were fairly underwhelming. I enjoyed seeing people actually play out the songs Tim Burton left out of his version, plus one ("Ladies In Their Sensitivities") that's only on my soundtrack in a very curtailed version. And I really like portions of the much-reprised "Ballad Of Sweeney Todd" ("Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd / He served a dark and a vengeful god / What happened then, well, that's the play / And he wouldn't want us to give it away…"). But actually watching the singers just stand there and deliver their performance directly at the audience… it seemed way, WAY too stagey and self-conscious and show-offy.

And the performances were SO bellowy and over-the-top and, well, theatrical. (Why is it that "theatrical" and "stagy" are both perjorative?) And they were ALL presented toward the audience, rather than the characters talking to each other. And I HATED the woman playing Joanna; she sounded like two cats in a bag with a rape whistle as far as I was concerned. And while Lansbury is adorable, she's ridiculous and broad at the same time. And Hearn just seemed goofy most of the time. Goofy and hammy.

And suddenly all the love the Burton version is getting made a LOT more sense. So I went back and watched several of the key numbers from the Burton version… and while the voices still seemed weak and whispery to me, just having them perform like they aren't playing to an audience made the story a hundred times more interesting. And suddenly their restraint and the internality of their performances seemed admirable instead of irritatingly repressed.

Not only that, but Sondheim gets SO cacophonous at times, and so muddy if it isn't done right. I can see people loving the Burton version just because of the careful audio mastering, such that you can actually hear both vocals clearly in any given duet, and you can actually make out both harmony lines instead of it all just becoming lyricless musical noice. I especially appreciated that on "My Friends."

So maybe I've come around on the Burton version. Though it's still so very, very, very BURTONY, what with the CGI zipping through extensive London streets, and the ridiculous stripy stockings, and the goth-times-a-million aesthetic and all. (Cass keeps referring to Depp as the Bride Of Frankenstein, and questioning why people didn't run screaming from his corpselike face and robot walk, instead of acting like he was, you know, a person.) But compared to someone bellowing in your face "BEHOLD ME SINGING THIS SONG," Depp's whispering "Hi, I'm over here and I'm crazy" now seems pretty damn creepy.

Still, I can't quite forgive Burton for emasculating "God, That's Good!" and turning Anthony into a 14-year-old boy. (Cass says he looks like a young Hilary Swank.) But people's love for the movie no longer seems insane.

Eventually I'll get over my Sweeneymania. Maybe by weaning myself off onto some other Sondheim show I haven't seen. I've suggested to Netflix that I really need to see "Sunday In The Park With George" sometime real soon now.

I'm-a feelin': thoughtful