"Sweeney Todd" resembles "Guys and Dolls" in one crucial way: Both works have plots closely tied to their sub-plots. (Jack Viertel makes this observation in "The Secret Life of the American Musical.")
It's not gospel that the sub-plot *needs* to have an impact on the main plot. In "Oklahoma!" the Laurie/Curly story could sail along easily without the comic relief provided by the Annie/Will sub-plot. And, in "Carousel," we can follow Julie and Billy down their dark road without ever giving a thought to Enoch and Carrie, if that's what we would like. The same is true in "Cabaret": You don't need to know what happens to the two elderly lovers to be invested in the main-stage story, the saga of Sally and Cliff.
But things work in an odd way, in "Guys and Dolls." There's a main story: The love of Nathan and Adelaide. There's a sub-plot: The love of Sky and Sarah. Nathan needs a stack of money to run his card game. To get that money, he bets Sky that he (Sky) can't take a certain buttoned-up young lady to Havana. So the main plot depends on the outcome of the sub-plot: No trip to Havana, no card game, no happy ending for Nathan and Adelaide. Things get complex--and the twists are handled elegantly.
Sondheim borrows from "Guys and Dolls." He could have Anthony, in "Sweeney Todd," completely detached from the Sweeney plot, if he'd like. Anthony could meet some lady, and the two could provide comic relief every few numbers, and that would be that. But Sondheim doesn't take this route. The woman Anthony happens to fall for is also Sweeney's long-lost daughter. For a while, this means that Anthony and Sweeney are on one page: Anthony will help Johanna to escape, and then Sweeney will provide a safe house for the two young lovers (and Sweeney will also then get to spend time with his daughter). When Anthony is loud and indiscreet, the plan evaporates, and Sweeney descends into total madness (or, a madness even deeper than the madness he was previously in). The sub-plot has permanently derailed the plot.
A few things are special about "No Place Like London," the second number in "Sweeney Todd." It's not really an explicit "I Want" song. But it does help the two male focal points to state their (contrasting) world views. Their stories will spin out from their initial statements: Anthony, on optimist, will have a plot with an at-least-partly optimistic conclusion, and Sweeney, the opposite, will have the opposite. Anthony, young, in love with the world, describes wonders upon wonders: "The Dardanelles, the mountains of Peru; but there's no place like London; I feel home again." By contrast, Sweeney, the wizened cynic, takes Anthony's message and perverts it. He uses Anthony's syntax and Anthony's melody, but with a new aim. "I, too, have sailed the world, beheld its wonders--for the cruelty of man is as wondrous as Peru." One melody, two opposing purposes: By recycling the melody, Sondheim suggests that the two men are significantly "linked," and that Anthony can be seen as a kind of anti-Sweeney, a "road not taken."
Another thing: Sondheim smartly presents the two men with the real thing that binds them, the mother of Johanna. Neither man recognizes that this beggar woman is who she is, and we in the audience are unaware, as well. The beggar woman is two-faced, as many people are in the show; it's only seconds after her pious request for "alms" that she hikes up her skirt and assails the men with blunt terms. ("Wouldn't you like to push me crumpet? It looks to me, dear, like you've got plenty there to push.") The beggar woman makes us think of Sweeney's famous observation: "There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it." Though Sweeney isn't aware, the beggar woman is oppressed, specifically, by the evil Beadle; it's the Beadle who might cross Sweeney's mind when he says, "At the top of the hole sit the privileged few, making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, turning beauty into filth and greed..." (These lines recall Marx; both the oppressor and the oppressed are diseased, in trouble. We'll remember this, later, when Sweeney says, "We all deserve to die...For the lives of the wicked should be made brief....For the rest of us, death will be a relief!")
So: All of that happens within the space of two or three minutes of music. Irony, tension, reversals, surprises: The plot is like an elaborate toy, and it's complemented by precise and striking metaphors. We get a P.D. James-ish mystery, and at the same time we get those "privileged few making mock of the lower zoo," and we get that older woman offering an evening of "push-me-crumpet," a "bounce around the bush."
It's not gospel that the sub-plot *needs* to have an impact on the main plot. In "Oklahoma!" the Laurie/Curly story could sail along easily without the comic relief provided by the Annie/Will sub-plot. And, in "Carousel," we can follow Julie and Billy down their dark road without ever giving a thought to Enoch and Carrie, if that's what we would like. The same is true in "Cabaret": You don't need to know what happens to the two elderly lovers to be invested in the main-stage story, the saga of Sally and Cliff.
But things work in an odd way, in "Guys and Dolls." There's a main story: The love of Nathan and Adelaide. There's a sub-plot: The love of Sky and Sarah. Nathan needs a stack of money to run his card game. To get that money, he bets Sky that he (Sky) can't take a certain buttoned-up young lady to Havana. So the main plot depends on the outcome of the sub-plot: No trip to Havana, no card game, no happy ending for Nathan and Adelaide. Things get complex--and the twists are handled elegantly.
Sondheim borrows from "Guys and Dolls." He could have Anthony, in "Sweeney Todd," completely detached from the Sweeney plot, if he'd like. Anthony could meet some lady, and the two could provide comic relief every few numbers, and that would be that. But Sondheim doesn't take this route. The woman Anthony happens to fall for is also Sweeney's long-lost daughter. For a while, this means that Anthony and Sweeney are on one page: Anthony will help Johanna to escape, and then Sweeney will provide a safe house for the two young lovers (and Sweeney will also then get to spend time with his daughter). When Anthony is loud and indiscreet, the plan evaporates, and Sweeney descends into total madness (or, a madness even deeper than the madness he was previously in). The sub-plot has permanently derailed the plot.
A few things are special about "No Place Like London," the second number in "Sweeney Todd." It's not really an explicit "I Want" song. But it does help the two male focal points to state their (contrasting) world views. Their stories will spin out from their initial statements: Anthony, on optimist, will have a plot with an at-least-partly optimistic conclusion, and Sweeney, the opposite, will have the opposite. Anthony, young, in love with the world, describes wonders upon wonders: "The Dardanelles, the mountains of Peru; but there's no place like London; I feel home again." By contrast, Sweeney, the wizened cynic, takes Anthony's message and perverts it. He uses Anthony's syntax and Anthony's melody, but with a new aim. "I, too, have sailed the world, beheld its wonders--for the cruelty of man is as wondrous as Peru." One melody, two opposing purposes: By recycling the melody, Sondheim suggests that the two men are significantly "linked," and that Anthony can be seen as a kind of anti-Sweeney, a "road not taken."
Another thing: Sondheim smartly presents the two men with the real thing that binds them, the mother of Johanna. Neither man recognizes that this beggar woman is who she is, and we in the audience are unaware, as well. The beggar woman is two-faced, as many people are in the show; it's only seconds after her pious request for "alms" that she hikes up her skirt and assails the men with blunt terms. ("Wouldn't you like to push me crumpet? It looks to me, dear, like you've got plenty there to push.") The beggar woman makes us think of Sweeney's famous observation: "There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it." Though Sweeney isn't aware, the beggar woman is oppressed, specifically, by the evil Beadle; it's the Beadle who might cross Sweeney's mind when he says, "At the top of the hole sit the privileged few, making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, turning beauty into filth and greed..." (These lines recall Marx; both the oppressor and the oppressed are diseased, in trouble. We'll remember this, later, when Sweeney says, "We all deserve to die...For the lives of the wicked should be made brief....For the rest of us, death will be a relief!")
So: All of that happens within the space of two or three minutes of music. Irony, tension, reversals, surprises: The plot is like an elaborate toy, and it's complemented by precise and striking metaphors. We get a P.D. James-ish mystery, and at the same time we get those "privileged few making mock of the lower zoo," and we get that older woman offering an evening of "push-me-crumpet," a "bounce around the bush."
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