{"id":1022,"date":"2011-11-17T13:55:02","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T18:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2012-11-23T00:35:31","modified_gmt":"2012-11-23T05:35:31","slug":"isnt-that-sweeney-there-beside-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2011\/11\/isnt-that-sweeney-there-beside-you.html","title":{"rendered":"Isn’t that Sweeney there beside you?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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I\u2019m in transit today. \u00a0It\u2019s the weekend of the Harvard-Yale football game, and I\u2019m headed up early to see the campus production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0So while I navigate wind and rain and buses and trains, you can check out the paper I wrote on Sweeney\u2019s moral code for my Sondheim seminar last year. \u00a0I\u2019ve uploaded the document \u201cIf Only Angels Could Prevail<\/em>: The Moral Tragedy of Sweeney Todd<\/em><\/a>\u201d to Scribd.<\/p>\n

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To be honest, I love Sweeney<\/em> and Sondheim so much that I\u2019d be sorely tempted to share the paper even if it had no relevance to religion, but, given that the main reaction I got from the friends who read it was, \u201cYou are such<\/em> a crypto-Catholic\u201d I guess it falls within this blog\u2019s purview. \u00a0Basically, I was looking at Sweeney<\/em> as a moral fable in a world that\u2019s fallen a lot farther than ours (plus raking the movie version over the coals for eliminating the chorus from the show). \u00a0Teaser quote below, followed by a clip of Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone singing \u201cNothing\u2019s Gonna Harm You.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sondheim and Wheeler build up a world that is practically impervious to goodness.\u00a0 The monstrosity they engineer births the bestial chorus, forced to retreat into madness.\u00a0 The chorus and Tobias\u2014who has joined them in their insanity by the end of the show\u2014have made a complete break with the sordid reality they find themselves in.\u00a0 The residents of the madhouse are authentic\u2014they admit how they have been destroyed by their world.\u00a0 Mrs. Lovett is terrifying because she refused to acknowledge her own brokenness.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Lovett embodies the cheerful nihilism that Lahr tried to ascribe to the whole production.\u00a0 Every ounce of her artifice is spent in denial of the bleakness of her world.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t escape the harshness of the world by trying to ignore its immorality; she denies the fact that immorality is abhorrent.\u00a0 She never sees a distinction between Sweeney\u2019s revenge on the Judge and the deaths of anyone else unlucky enough to enter the tonsorial parlor.\u00a0 The malevolence of the Judge does not register with her as willed evil.\u00a0 The cruelty of men is not tragic for Lovett, but as natural as a thunderstorm.\u00a0 Both are threatening, but neither carries moral content.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n