Good morning, all! After all the check nonsense and the cancellation of my plans yesterday, I spent the evening sulking and feeling sorry for myself, It was neither productive nor rewarding, but cash flow is a self-employment curse and $4400-4500, which should have arrived by Friday in two payments, is a lot of money to be floating around anywhere but where it should be, in my bank account. My publisher has not not paid me royalties this year, which usually arrive by June, and he's been promising a royalty check since August! I've never had a problem with him before, either, so my horoscope must be a mess at present. Yes, I am unhappy about it and yes, I have only enough money to cover outstanding checks.
On another note (a, so we can go to D-mnor or F-major), DRJason wrote this about SWEENEY:
SWEENEY purists will not like this production. But honestly - who wants to pay $100 to see a reproduction of the original show when you can get it on DVD for $25 with the original cast!?!
I love SWEENEY TODD, but the PBS broadcast with Lansbury and Hearn is a poor facsimile of the original: Len Carious was brilliant and gone, the trapdoors in the floor are missing, several key cast members - Betsy Joslin and Jack Eric Williams, for two - are replaced. and I believe Lansbury's brilliant performance seems broader because she's not playing to the camera but to the last row of the balcony. The original production, with the exception of what I believe were two poor directing choices by Harold Prince. was truly one of the great experiences in my theatre-going career.
I don't necessarily want to pay $100 for a reproduction of that staging, but I do want to see a SWEENEY TODD that tells the story well, presents the music as wells as possible, and provides a bit of horror along with the laughs (whatever happened to the projected Tim Burton film plans?). I do want to see this production, but to me it smacks of off-Broadway experimental theatre owing a debt to the CABARET revival which also began outside London's West End, and one more diminishing of a theatre orchestra: we'll never hear Tunick's great orchestration in a Broadway theatre again.