We decided to try the idea of a funeral as this foreshadows the death of Sweeney. Once we arrive at the coffin, we will turn to the audience and arrange ourselves in a V formation. On the line, "Hold it to..." we all sharply look to the right and slowly drift back to looking forwards. On the line, "Freely flows..." we all raise our arm sharply and lower it back down slowly. We then remain still throughout.
Below is a video of this version of the prologue:
Although we spent quite a lot of time on this prologue, we felt that it was far too simple to the point of it being rather boring. It doesn't do much to represent the story and we feel that we could devise something better. Also, we agreed that lifting the coffin to the stage would be too difficult to do whilst singing.
We began to look at our alternative idea of having us enter from different areas of the stage space. We wanted to make this impactful though, having character entrance points mean something. Although we're not our characters at this point, besides Rob, the audience would relate us as actors to our main characters. This led to us discussing how we'd stage some of our later scenes so that we can place characters entry points in the prologue.
With the ability to use the steel decking we wanted to put Sweeney's barber shop up higher as it not only is above Mrs Lovett's Meat Pies but also to highlight it's importance. We thought it would be effective to have Dan enter from Todd's shop as Pirelli is the first character to die at the hands of Sweeney. We wanted Judge Turpin's house to also be up high so we placed this section on the other side of the stage but without Steel decking; this is where I would enter. We wanted to Taylor and Lorna to enter from below the stage as they are two of the most mysterious characters in the show. We wanted Ollie and Alice to enter from behind the audience as Alice's character would be kept as far away from anything as possible by Judge Turpin and Ollie's character is often told to keep an eye on her. We wanted Tom to enter from the side of the stage space as he enters the story very conveniently so we wanted this to reflect in his initial entrance to the stage. Finally James wouldn't enter at all but start sitting on top of the coffin as he plays Tobias, the murderer of Sweeney, so we thought this would be effective to have him start sitting on the coffin, foreshadowing the events to come.
Below is a diagram of all the entry and exit points:
During this new prologue, we have James sing the first two lines and then Tom and Dan enter and finish the verse with James. Next, Lorna sings the first line of the next verse and I enter and sing the next line. Then everyone else enters and sings the rest of the verse. By this point everyone is by the coffin lying on the floor with the foot facing the audience. We all lower down to crouching and watch the coffin intently. James stands up and faces the audience. On, "swing you razor..." James raises his hand up as if he's holding a razor and the rest of us slowly stand and look at the knife. On, "hold it to..." James mimes throwing the knife to the right and the rest of us sharply turn to face the audience as opposed to the knife. We sing the rest of the chorus to the audience and during this Rob stands. When Rob starts singing Sweeney's solo section, we all scarper to our original places and finish the song.
Below is a video of this version of the prologue:
I feel that this version of the prologue is a far sight better than our previous version as it not only foreshadows events to come and reference to our characters, but it just looks more interesting and is more fun to watch.
Next lesson, we will work on the next section up to "The Worst Pies in London."
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