Anthony Tommasini, classical music critic for The New York Times, has a piece on Johnny Depp's amazing performance in Sweeney Todd, making clear what so many critics (and devotees of the original Broadway show) seem to have missed: Depp's a terrific singer.
When I first heard Tim Burton had cast his frequent collaborator in the title role, it seemed ridiculous. Sure, as an actor, Depp is fearless, but surely the part of Sweeney is one of the most vocally demanding roles in musical theater history. The ability to sorta carry a tune wouldn't be enough. This needed a trained singer.
What I didn't foresee was how malleable Stephen Sondheim's extraordinary score would be in the hands of Burton and Depp, how they would bleed (literally!) away any traces of theatricality from the material, how they could transform Sondheim's quasi-operatic work into something so hushed, so intimate.
On stage, a performer can claim a role as their own, but in the musical theater, at least, it's difficult to for one to get lost in it. With a pit band accompanying and other actors waiting for their cues, a musical performance becomes largely technical, and once it's locked, it's locked.
Even on film, most performances in musicals are the same way: star turns rather than portrayals of characters. Nothing wrong with that, of course, since most musicals are written to give pleasure, not to provide dazzling insight into human nature. And of course, I can think of plenty of exceptions right off the top of my head. (Dan Dailey in It's Always Fair Weather, Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon, even Robert Preston in The Music Man.)
But I've never seen anything like this:
Depp's growled "I want you bleeders" was surely a deliberate choice, but what about the slight crack in his voice immediately after, as he cries, "Anybody"? An actor's trick or a happy coincidence? Astounding either way, and wholly free of any trace of the Broadway stage.
That is perhaps the most amazing thing about the whole picture. Even in the best adaptations of stage musicals (like West Side Story) you can see the seams, and historically even the greatest directors of original film musicals, like Stanley Donen, Vincente Minnelli and Rouben Mamoulian, have been stymied when they've tried to bring stage material on screen. Sweeney Todd joins Bob Fosse's Cabaret as the only adaptation that feels like an original. It's organic, immediate, and it feels brand new. This honors Sondheim best by ignoring the original show, or any revivals. Burton made a film first, and a great one.
