Double - Performance Workshop (Sweeney Todd) - Blog 9 - 27/02/17

Today we worked on A Little Priest, the song that closes Act One and kicks off the chaotic murderous rampage of Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett. We at first thought that Rob and Lorna would interact with each other a lot and mime the different characters they’d murder but we felt that this would be pretty boring if not pulled off right and we wanted something a bit more extravagant for this song as it’s a huge pivotal moment in the musical. We wanted there to be plenty of movement but keep it imaginative. That’s when we remembered a video we’ve seen before of Kristen Chenoweth performing “If You Haven’t, But You Did,” from the 1951 Broadway show Two On The Aisle. In the performance (which is linked here) she uses another person and interacts with them as a dead body. She moves him around, picks him up but the guy moves around aswell but makes it look like he’s dead still. Not only does this make it very effective and dark but also very funny too.

We thought that we could easily transfer this into our Sweeney Todd by using the body of Pirelli! We could have the body/Dan come in from the passage leading under the stage and Lorna and Rob interact with him putting him into the positions of their “victims to be”.

Next lesson Lorna, Rob and Dan will carry on with this and Ollie, Tom and I will go over “Johanna” as we have Tom.