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Past Reviews What's New on the Rialto All About Sweeney:
New Book Chronicles the Life of Musical Theatre's Demon Barber By Mark Dundas Wood
Pender, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, had found himself drenched in all things Sondheim even before beginning work on that massive project. He'd been a contributor to the long-running magazine The Sondheim Review, beginning with a review he wrote of a late-1990s Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park rendition of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (That production starred Pamela Myers, famous for her earlier role in the original Broadway production of Sondheim's Company, as Mrs. Lovett.) Beginning in 2004, Pender served as the magazine's managing editor, continuing in the role for 12 years. Stephen Sondheim passed away a few months after the Encyclopedia was published. In a recent phone interview, Pender told me that he is not absolutely sure whether the composer ever had a chance to peruse the book, but he knows that a copy was delivered to Sondheim's home and wound up on his bookshelf, apparently before he passed. The Encyclopedia sold well, and Rowman & Littlefield eventually contacted Pender to ask whether he had any interest in tackling another project–perhaps an in-depth study of a particular Sondheim musical? "I said, 'Well, if that's what you have in mind, I would love to do one about the show that is considered to be Sondheim's masterpiece, and that would be Sweeney Todd.' So, we started down that path. In the meantime, in spring of 2024, Rowman & Littlefield was acquired by Bloomsbury Publishing from London, and that's who became my publisher. The editor I had from Rowman & Littlefield was absorbed by that acquisition, and so he stayed with me on the whole project." Although Pender has a PhD in English Literature, he did not want to take a scholarly approach with the Sweeney book. He preferred something both broader and simpler: suitable not only for academics and Sondheim completists but also for readers with a casual interest in musical theatre. He decided there was no need for a lot of in-person research for the project–no interviews with cast members or creative teams from various past productions. He would rely for the most part on the loads of books on his shelves, all dealing with Sondheim in some way, plus all those many articles, interviews, and reviews that had appeared in The Sondheim Review. The resulting book, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: Beyond the Bloody Musical Masterpiece, includes a look at the enduring legend of Sweeney and shows how the folklore surrounding the figure evolved, centuries before the musical first opened on Broadway. Pender had access to some of the early literary efforts in which the character of Sweeney figured. (The persona was especially popular in the 19th century.) He immersed himself in the "penny dreadfuls" and melodramas that featured antecedents for the murderous barber whose victims would wind up baked into Mrs. Lovett's meat pies on Broadway. He was surprised to learn that Christopher Bond's 1970 play–which had prompted Sondheim's interest in musicalizing the story when he saw it in London–had provided a template that Sondheim followed with remarkable precision. Certain lyrics from the musical, Pender noted, can be traced directly to specific lines from Bond's script. "Really, through the 19th century, the character of Sweeney was just a villainous person who was kind of a serial killer...," he explained. "If he had a motivation, it was to steal things from people for his own aggrandizement. It was really Christopher Bond's edition of the story that added the psychological motivation: the revenge plot." (Pender stressed that the importance of the Bond script to Sondheim does not nullify the fine work done by Sweeney Todd's actual librettist, Hugh Wheeler.) Though people continue to search for evidence of a flesh-and-blood, historical Sweeney, Pender said that none has ever been identified: "There's some very loose historic basis for some of these things. But most of it got swept up in "around-the-campfire' storytelling...exaggerated and built upon." The development and arrival of the first Broadway version of Sweeney Todd (directed by Harold Prince and starring Len Cariou in the title role and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett) is a big part of Pender's book, of course. Masterpiece or not, however, that original Broadway run in 1979 was not wholly successful–at least not in commercial terms. Nor was the national tour that followed it. Initially, some people couldn't quite wrap their minds around the idea of a musical with such violent content. But as time passed, Pender said, theatregoers seemed to overcome their squeamishness: "The horror factor that put people off initially was probably overcome by the weight of other positive evidence. Other revivals of the show, its prevalence around the world, and [Tim] Burton's [2007] film–all of those, I think, just continued to mount evidence [that allowed] people to say, 'Oh, this is a great show.' And it is a great show." Pender insists that while audiences may have been dubious about the musical's bloody subject matter, they were nearly unanimous in their enthusiasm for Sondheim's score. In later chapters of the book, Pender looks in detail at Sweeney's major revivals and also touches on the many smaller productions staged worldwide, as well as the Sweeney Todd School Edition, a version adjusted to be performed by teenage performers, who tend to revel in rather than shy away from the show's gore-fest. He is taken by how flexible the musical has proven to be in terms of staging. It can be presented as a grandiose tragic epic (as Harold Prince wanted–and pretty much got–in 1979) or as a chamber piece in horror-film mode (as Sondheim himself believed was the right dimension and tone for the piece). Opera companies have also staged Sweeney with some frequency, though Pender is somewhat leery about that practice. He conceded that he once saw the Dayton Opera in Ohio do a respectable job with the property, but, with regard to operatic treatments of musical theatre generally, he added: "I fear sometimes they're just gonna do the 'park and bark,' where they just sing stuff, and you don't really get the drama that comes with good actors handling it." Now that his book has been released, Pender plans a few promotional activities and hopes to schedule an event at Manhattan's Drama Book Shop (as he did with the Encyclopedia), but no big book tour is planned. He would welcome, however, being asked by theatre companies that happen to be planning a production of Sweeney to travel there and present pre-show talks. "I'm very pleased to have done this," he concluded about the book, "and I feel so lucky to have had what I would call a 'tangential' relationship with Sondheim. It was not like we were pen pals or anything. I did interview him in person a couple of times. He was very helpful when I did the Encyclopedia, in terms of answering questions. I always had very brief responses, but [they were] very quickly turned around when I would ask him anything. "With this book, he was no longer available. But I feel honored to have had the opportunity to offer some further insights into...one of his greatest works."
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Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: Beyond the Bloody Musical Masterpiece