We are three weeks from our opening! It is hard to believe. My days are filled with excitement and nervousness. This last week I paced the Lunsford trail around ACU daily with my notebook in hand, running lines and singing songs to myself. The Lunsford is no replacement for the Thames Path, but in Abilene it’s the best a rambler can hope for.
In Act 2 of Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett sings “By the Sea“. It is one of Lovett’s signature song. In “By the Sea,” Lovett muses about a future life she envisions for herself and Sweeney. As is always the case for Sondheim tunes, the lyrics are subversive and witty. As Lovett paints for Sweeney a vivid picture of their life together “down by the sea,” Sweeney is oblivious. Obsessed with revenge, Sweeney has only one lyric that he repeats throughout the song: “Anything you say…,” a dismissive gesture from a man hellbent on renewing his plan to kill Judge Turpin. By this point of the show, the partnership that Sweeney and Lovett enjoy obscures the conflicting visions that motivate each of them. Lovett yearns for domestic comfort with Sweeney at her side. Sweeney desires revenge. They are two ships passing in the night.
I confess that until this week I considered “By the Sea” something of a throwaway song, one of my least favorite in the show. After staging the song, however, I am coming to feel differently. Katie, our director, has worked wonders with Christine Pinson (Lovett), staging a song in which Sweeney is a sort of “prop” for Lovett to manipulate, physically and metaphorically, as she sings. The song captures the perversity of Mrs. Lovett even as it shows just how far gone Sweeney is–with revenge on his mind, he can’t even see what Lovett is doing.
The lyric “anything you say” is a dismissive one for Sweeney, but over the weekend these words have taken on a different meaning for me. I’ve been thinking a lot about how participating in live theatre requires a level of trust from amateur actors like me. I’m learning that I need to trust the director, the other actors, and the behind-the-scenes crew responsible for making the show run smoothly. When Katie describes a vision for how a scene should be, I’m learning to trust her and her crew because of their substantial experience doing these things. “Anything you say,” Katie. In the context of preparing a theatrical show, these words convey a confidence in professional expertise, an awareness that I am contributing to a larger artistic vision of the story we are telling together.
On Saturday we spent the afternoon doing firearm safety and theatre combat training and blocking for the show. Sweeney Todd has a surprising amount of physical violence. One person is shot on stage. Bodies are dragged across the stage. There is a fight scene between Sweeney and Pirelli. Pirelli is strangled. There are several people who have their throats slit on stage during the show. Each one of these things creates the potential for bodily injury for actors (a quick aside: after training yesterday, I confess that I am horrified at just how unsafe we were in high school when physical violence was involved!). Participating in this show requires confidence and trust in the ability of professionals to teach amateurs like me how to do these things–which are not natural to me!–in ways that protect actors from injury.
That’s where we are at the moment! I’m fully off book for Act 1, the longest act of the show, and I’ll be off book by next week for Act 2. I am having so much fun rehearsing for the show and am thrilled that in three weeks our cast will be looking out over a live audience in the Paramount Theatre. Come one, come all. Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd…
