By Jeffrey Sweet
Lately, Timothy Spall seems to have cornered the market on evil henchmen. He transformed from a rat to a rat-like ally of Voldemort in a Harry Potter movie, and he’s Fagin, abetting the murderous Bill Sykes in a new TV miniseries of Oliver Twist. Within the last couple of months, he’s refined his specialty to henching in musicals, colluding with Susan Sarandon’s evil queen in Enchanted and plotting with Alan Rickman’s corrupt judge as Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd.
At first, Enchanted and Sweeney Todd would seem to have little other in common. Enchanted is a nimble and light-hearted riff on the conventions of Walt Disney cartoons, given a little extra zetz by the fact that it was created by the Disney studio itself. And Sweeney Todd is ... well, it’s Sweeney Todd. Frequently nimble, hardly light-hearted.
But both films are not just the stories of their leading characters, they are about the possibilities and terrors of cities.
The Enchanted city is present-day New York, which is presented as a world of endless delight. You know New Yorkers’ reputation as hostile and aggressive goons? None of those cretins made it out of the casting call. Everybody in the film is delighted to rush to the aid of the princess Giselle who has been tossed out of the two-dimensional heaven of Andalasia and finds herself entering 3D through a manhole cover in Times Square. The film makes the case that Manhattan has it all over home. Home may have had castles and quaint cottages in the wood; they are no match for skyscrapers, trendy restaurants, upscale shops and ballrooms in the sky.
Part of Enchanted’s brief is to make peace between the images of princesses’ passivity in the Disney catalogue and contemporary feminist values, so in this film it is Giselle who saves her prince’s butt from a dragon. But she gets to wear the pretty clothes, too. In a clever twist on Cinderella and other cartoons in which the heroine enlists the help of birds and cute mice in doing housework chores, Giselle does her cleaning up singing “Happy Working Song” (one of several adroit collaborations between Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz) with the choreographed assistance of Manhattan’s wildlife – cockroaches and rats.
Vermin also make a memorable appearance to music in Sweeney Todd. During “The Worst Pies in London,” Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett alternates between serving her inedibles and splatting crawlies on the beat.
If Enchanted’s city is a playland, from the first looming images seen from a ship on the Thames as Sweeney returns from exile, the city is a hell. At several points in the Stephen Sondheim score, the murderous hero sings of London as “a great black pit,” and production designer Dante Ferretti responds with a nightmare vision of vividly detailed grime. In such an environment, is it any wonder that violence and corruption are promises in every alley and shadow? Indeed, the opening title sequence is of the progress of a flood of gelatinous blood through the city’s pavement, machinery and sewers.
I have my quibbles about this Sweeney (“A Little Priest” used to be a perversely joyous number, filled with bad puns; this version doesn’t quite earn its climax), but director Tim Burton makes London one of the major characters in a way no previous version has, contributing as much to this film as his brooding Gotham City did to Batman.
I can’t help but wonder what would have become of Giselle if, instead of Manhattan, she had emerged into one of Tim Burton’s cities. Timothy Spall would probably be there, too.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.
Lately, Timothy Spall seems to have cornered the market on evil henchmen. He transformed from a rat to a rat-like ally of Voldemort in a Harry Potter movie, and he’s Fagin, abetting the murderous Bill Sykes in a new TV miniseries of Oliver Twist. Within the last couple of months, he’s refined his specialty to henching in musicals, colluding with Susan Sarandon’s evil queen in Enchanted and plotting with Alan Rickman’s corrupt judge as Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd.
At first, Enchanted and Sweeney Todd would seem to have little other in common. Enchanted is a nimble and light-hearted riff on the conventions of Walt Disney cartoons, given a little extra zetz by the fact that it was created by the Disney studio itself. And Sweeney Todd is ... well, it’s Sweeney Todd. Frequently nimble, hardly light-hearted.
But both films are not just the stories of their leading characters, they are about the possibilities and terrors of cities.
The Enchanted city is present-day New York, which is presented as a world of endless delight. You know New Yorkers’ reputation as hostile and aggressive goons? None of those cretins made it out of the casting call. Everybody in the film is delighted to rush to the aid of the princess Giselle who has been tossed out of the two-dimensional heaven of Andalasia and finds herself entering 3D through a manhole cover in Times Square. The film makes the case that Manhattan has it all over home. Home may have had castles and quaint cottages in the wood; they are no match for skyscrapers, trendy restaurants, upscale shops and ballrooms in the sky.
Part of Enchanted’s brief is to make peace between the images of princesses’ passivity in the Disney catalogue and contemporary feminist values, so in this film it is Giselle who saves her prince’s butt from a dragon. But she gets to wear the pretty clothes, too. In a clever twist on Cinderella and other cartoons in which the heroine enlists the help of birds and cute mice in doing housework chores, Giselle does her cleaning up singing “Happy Working Song” (one of several adroit collaborations between Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz) with the choreographed assistance of Manhattan’s wildlife – cockroaches and rats.
Vermin also make a memorable appearance to music in Sweeney Todd. During “The Worst Pies in London,” Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett alternates between serving her inedibles and splatting crawlies on the beat.
If Enchanted’s city is a playland, from the first looming images seen from a ship on the Thames as Sweeney returns from exile, the city is a hell. At several points in the Stephen Sondheim score, the murderous hero sings of London as “a great black pit,” and production designer Dante Ferretti responds with a nightmare vision of vividly detailed grime. In such an environment, is it any wonder that violence and corruption are promises in every alley and shadow? Indeed, the opening title sequence is of the progress of a flood of gelatinous blood through the city’s pavement, machinery and sewers.
I have my quibbles about this Sweeney (“A Little Priest” used to be a perversely joyous number, filled with bad puns; this version doesn’t quite earn its climax), but director Tim Burton makes London one of the major characters in a way no previous version has, contributing as much to this film as his brooding Gotham City did to Batman.
I can’t help but wonder what would have become of Giselle if, instead of Manhattan, she had emerged into one of Tim Burton’s cities. Timothy Spall would probably be there, too.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.