Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Live music, Live theater, Live musical theater

When I started this blog it was to chronicle my experiences doing all the things I'd always wanted to do but, for whatever reason, had not done as much as I'd have liked. The main things that fall into that category are live music, live theater and travelling.

It occurs to me right now that I was able to combine all three last April. I went to Dublin with a friend of mine and we went to see Sweeny Todd (live musical theater). It was a really fantastic show and it was the first time I'd ever seen it, and I got to see the first ever Irish professional production of it.

This past weekend I saw the latest film version of it too and it's an interesting comparison. I think ultimately I preferred the stage version. I've finally come to the realization that I don't much care for Tim Burton's directorial style. Not that I even think it's bad, I can see the good things about it, I just don't personally like them.

Tim Burton films are very stylized and the style is, as my friend likes to say, very animated. The translation of that politeness is that his films are like cartoons and the characters are really caricatures. Johnny Depp, who, in non Tim Burton films, often exhibits an amazing range as an actor plays a fairly one dimensional Sweeny Todd. As I've seen Johnny Depp in a lot of films and am often impressed by his nuanced acting I can only assume this one dimensional characterization is a result of direction more than anything.

However, Helena Bohnam Carter and Ed Sanders give surprisingly layered performances given the style of the film. The kid is one of the few clearly sympathetic characters in the source material regardless of the skill of the actor or the choices of the director. He's been rescued from the work house only to be indentured to an abusive boss who is then murdered at which point he's taken in by kind hearted woman who bakes human meat into her meat pies and, well, you get the idea, he's had a hard life.

The character of Mrs Lovett though, is not so clearly sympathetic. In fact, in the stage version I saw she seemed pure evil and any horrible thing that befell her I felt was deserved. In that stage production Sweeny Todd was the sympathetic character. No mater how many eveil deeds he did I still felt sorry for him, felt like he'd been driven to his madness. In this film version I felt exactly the opposite. Helena Bonham Carter takes the role of Mrs Lovett and makes her into someone of great feeling. She's really quite spectacular in this role.

Could be another directorial choice, to portray Mrs Lovett as more sympathetic than Sweeny Todd, but I wonder. I wonder if she just went her own way with it. Her performance seems so out of place in the picture. The hair, and makeup, and set design, etc, all combine to create a certain feel that her emotional and layered performance doesn't seem to fit. Johnny Depp's single layered portrayal of Sweeny Todd is much more in line with the tone set by Burton and indicative of what I've now decided I don't like about Tim Burton movies.

Incidentally, on my crusade to see more live theater, I also saw Jersey Boys this past weekend which was brilliant, though as largely expositional as you'd expect a play with the tag line "ask four guys, you get four different answers" to be, and I've also been enjoying the new season at the Seattle Rep. On the live music front, the Dropkick Murphys are coming to town next month. And as for the travelling, I'm planning a trip back to Europe in May this year. Perhaps I should call those things my New Year resolutions. I don't generally make New Year Resolutions but for trying to keep in touch with my friends and family better (and I'm generally not even successful at that one). At least these promises to myself are ones that I know I can keep.