Preview
Identifier
Revue Program_Page_28
Creation Date
4-23-2021
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Theatre and Performance Studies
Description
DRAMATURGY - “A LITTLE PRIEST”
Written by esteemed composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, “A Little Priest” is one of the darker songs in the 1979 musical Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The song is one of the major turning points in the musical, the finale for Act I, when Mrs. Lovett and Sweeny Todd decide that Mr. Todd will murder his customers and their corpses will fill the meat pies at Mrs. Lovett’s shop downstairs. The song is a flurry of puns and innuendos as Mrs. Lovett and Sweeny Todd dance around the shop, singing of the different characteristics and flavors that can be found in the people of Victorian London. While much of the song is written to be bouncy and light in its melody and tone, the lyrics undercut this idea, giving commentary on the corrupt nature of humanity: “It’s man devouring man my dear / And who are we to deny it in here?”
Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street had a large impact on audiences, and it was eventually made into a film by Tim Burton in 2007, bringing in a larger audience to shock with the dark humor and gruesome themes within the show--themes that mimicked many of the ideas of the time it was written. In the 1970s, the American public had a pessimistic view of the government and power, thinking it corrupt. Despite being set in Victorian England, the show holds onto the pessimistic view with Mrs. Lovett and Sweeny Todd being righters of wrongs in a way that corrupts them to the point of being as bad as those they destroy.
Publisher
Arkansas State University
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Theatre Program
Keywords
musical, compliation, retrospective, medley
