@@paradoxical7782 Hes an adult with a mental disability so everyone treats him like a kid, hes only actually a kid in Tim Burtons movie. I understand the confusion though
Neil Patrick Harris is amazing, this is a lot harder than it looks. He has an amazing vocal range and he made it unique with that accent, doesn't matter what it sounds like we get the point. He's talented
I think it’s the fact that when he gets to the line, he tones down the hammy fake Italian accent, which allows him to sound more genuinely indignant at the accusation.
NPH killed this performance. This song has a ton of words, several different keys and delivered in an English accent! Did all this while dancing, running around and acting. Hats off to you Neil!!!
Sweeney: "These [razors] are my friends" Also Sweeney: "See these razors? I lay these against £5 that you are no match for me." Mrs. Lovett, you really should've seen it coming at the end.
more than 20, no? at any rate him Hearn/Lansbury is my all-time favorite Sweeney/Lovett, I think I've watched the recording with that cast a million times.
Len Cariou may have been the first actor to play Sweeney, but George Hearn has made that role his own. Hearn is to Sweeney Todd what Michael Crawford is to The Phantom Of The Opera.
Scott Gerrard OK, I hope we're square then; we can't know everything about everybody, but when we discover something wonderful, it's great to embrace and share it :)
It's called acting... He's playing an orphaned child whose job it is is to perpetuate an arrant scam, if he fails to do so he'll be mercilessly beaten by Pirelli and is being revealed as nothing more than a fraud... Wouldn't you be pretty nervous?
Matthew Battles trust me- I know he's acting. You can be playing a character that is nervous, but you can still be kind of out of it. Neil is definitely kind of out of it.
The mighty and inimitable George Hearn. He's getting kind of old, but you should check him out in the touring production with Angela Lansbury. Best Sweeney ever cast.
:) The actor singing Sweeney Todd's part is George Hearn, the second man to play the role on Broadway. He is also the man featured in the 1982 film version (available on DVD)
My clarinet teacher was Toby in Sweeney Todd in Syndey about 20years ago I think. Anyway, every lesson he sings this for me. I sing the extra bits. I love my lessons. And 2:38, that bit is hilarious, Harris' hand moments.
PiccoloChaos This is an unrelated, but fun fact: Tywin Lannister, or rather Charles Dance, did something Broadway-related (in loose terms). He starred in a TV miniseries as Erik, or The Phantom, of Phantom of the Opera fame. The Broadway part comes in to play, with the miniseries not being based on the Lloyd Webber musical, but the unproduced (at the time) musical, Phantom, which was written by Maurie Yeston and Arthur Koppit-- the duo behind the Broadway musical, Nine.
All respect to NPH, at the top of his (or any other's) performing game. That's a given. But you have to have something to perform. And Sondheim (with whom I was blessed enough to have studied) gives him everything. Ev. Er. Ry. Thing. The fly-fisherman's let-it-out, let-it-in dexterity with the material. The hold-your-breath, here's another ix-ir rhyme. The gleeful key-changes, which only a composer-lyricist could bring off. The look, here's Cockney 19th-century English: another colour with which I can make still-more-luminous this palette, forging rhymes which would never chime in received American pronunciation. And look again, here is cod-Italian, arriving like the cavalry. Blessed I was. But blessed we all were and are, to be alive at the same time as Stephen Sondheim.
I never knew Toby was meant to be a handicapped man: I did Sweeney Todd a few years ago as the school play (only a chorus member sadly, though I did want to be Toby) so obviously it was a kid playing him then too...
As far as I can tell, it depends on the production and the interpretation of the viewer. I generally read him as a little boy, because that's what he is in most versions, unless he's specifically portrayed otherwise.
All the "tick sir, elixir" rhymes always reminded me of Fox in Sox by Dr. Seuss. To quote the Doc: "Please, sir. I don't like this trick, sir. My tongue isn't quick or slick, sir. I get all those ticks and clocks, sir, mixed up with the chicks and tocks, sir. I can't do it, Mr. Fox, sir."
