- The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Sondheim’s Genius
- Sondheim and Postmodernism
- “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: Oscar Hammerstein’s Influence on Sondheim
- “Old Situations, New Complications”: Tradition and Experiment in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- <i>Anyone Can Whistle</i> as Experimental Theater
- The Prince–Sondheim Legacy
- “Growing Pains”: Revising Merrily We Roll Along
- “Give Us More to See”: The Visual World of Stephen Sondheim’s Musicals
- Orchestrators in their Own Words: The Sound of Sondheim in the Twenty-first Century
- “Nothing More than Just a Game”: The American Dream Goes Bust in Road Show
- “It Takes Two”: The Doubling of Actors and Roles in Sunday in the Park with George
- “Something Just Broke”: Assassins after the Iraq War—A Production and its Reception
- Sondheim on the London Stage
- “And One for Mahler”: An Opera Director’s Reflections on Sondheim in the Subsidized Theater
- Evening Primrose: Sondheim and Goldman’s Television Musical
- From Screen to Stage: A Little Night Music and Passion
- More Sondheim: Original Music for Movies
- Attending the Tale of Sweeney Todd: The Stage Musical and Tim Burton’s Film Version
- A Little Night Music: The Cynical Operetta
- Croaks into Song: Sondheim Tackles Greek Frogs
- Sweeney Todd: From Melodrama to Musical Tragedy
- “Careful the Spell You Cast”: Into the Woods and the Uses of Disenchantment
- Keeping Company with Sondheim’s Women
- Follies: Musical Pastiche and Cultural Archaeology
- Narratives of Progress and Tragedy in <i>Pacific Overtures</i>
- Queer Sondheim
- Sondheim’s America; America’s Sondheim
- Bibliography
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
In act 1 of Sondheim and Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd, Todd has a motivation for his actions, and his beautiful music gives audiences the opportunity to connect with his voice and his righteous indignation. The song “Epiphany” marks the moment of his transformation from melodramatic villain to tragic victim. It disrupts linear narrative through direct address, it disrupts melodic line by rapid juxtaposition, and it is accompanied by raucous and dissonant harmonies. The binary structure of the whole work hinges around this moment so that ultimately Todd appears as a tragic antihero, out of step with his world. His empathetic music renders him an everyman, the dominant consciousness, who allows audiences to perceive the world in a new and tragic light.
Keywords: Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim, melodrama, tragedy, film noir, tragic victim, melodramatic villain, Epiphany
Millie Taylor is Professor of Musical Theatre at the University of Winchester. Before becoming an academic she worked as a freelance musical director for almost twenty years, which included two productions of Sweeney Todd. Recent publications are British Pantomime Performance (2007), Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment (2012). She was guest editor of a special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre on “Voice and Excess” (January 2012). Forthcoming publications (both with Dominic Symonds) are an edited collection Gestures of Music Theatre: The Performativity of Song and Dance and a text book, Studying Musical Theatre.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Sondheim’s Genius
- Sondheim and Postmodernism
- “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: Oscar Hammerstein’s Influence on Sondheim
- “Old Situations, New Complications”: Tradition and Experiment in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- <i>Anyone Can Whistle</i> as Experimental Theater
- The Prince–Sondheim Legacy
- “Growing Pains”: Revising Merrily We Roll Along
- “Give Us More to See”: The Visual World of Stephen Sondheim’s Musicals
- Orchestrators in their Own Words: The Sound of Sondheim in the Twenty-first Century
- “Nothing More than Just a Game”: The American Dream Goes Bust in Road Show
- “It Takes Two”: The Doubling of Actors and Roles in Sunday in the Park with George
- “Something Just Broke”: Assassins after the Iraq War—A Production and its Reception
- Sondheim on the London Stage
- “And One for Mahler”: An Opera Director’s Reflections on Sondheim in the Subsidized Theater
- Evening Primrose: Sondheim and Goldman’s Television Musical
- From Screen to Stage: A Little Night Music and Passion
- More Sondheim: Original Music for Movies
- Attending the Tale of Sweeney Todd: The Stage Musical and Tim Burton’s Film Version
- A Little Night Music: The Cynical Operetta
- Croaks into Song: Sondheim Tackles Greek Frogs
- Sweeney Todd: From Melodrama to Musical Tragedy
- “Careful the Spell You Cast”: Into the Woods and the Uses of Disenchantment
- Keeping Company with Sondheim’s Women
- Follies: Musical Pastiche and Cultural Archaeology
- Narratives of Progress and Tragedy in <i>Pacific Overtures</i>
- Queer Sondheim
- Sondheim’s America; America’s Sondheim
- Bibliography
- Index
