No comments about SWEENEY TODD - the Barbarous Barber of Fleet Street ('A Thrilling Story of the Old City of London. Founded on Facts.').

No comments about Sweeney Todd the Demon of Barber of Fleet Street.

No comments about Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

No comments about Sweeney Todd Shock 'n' Roll Show (Acting Edition).

No comments about SWEENEY TODD - PLAYBILL - JUNE, 2006.

1 comments about The Dark Behind the Curtain.

1. I first discovered this book when I was in junior high school and enjoyed the way the author blended relatively ordinary youth experiences of cruelty, ostracism, gang-type bonding, and petty misbehavior with a disturbing representation of historical fact. Marshall, the callous but popular young star of a middle school production of "Sweeney Todd", becomes the channel of the play's evil, robbing the students around him of self-respect, fostering suspicion, and creating fear, much as his Victorian-slum counterparts did in days past. The handling of the narrator's relationship with Marshall and with the insecure and unattractive Ann is realistic and well-resolved, and the tension is effectively built, a series of innocuous clues leading to the supernatural conclusion. If the book has any weakness, it is the rather hasty and hey-presto ending, which technically satisfies but does not really do justice to the lengthy buildup.

1 comments about Sweeney Todd The Barber Of Fleet Street.

1. As to the story of "Sweeney Todd" please read my review on "The String of Pearls" of Wordsworth edition edited by Dick Collins.
   
   The story of the "Demon Barber" of Fleet Street was first published in 1847, and then its extended version in 1850. Though I have not yet confirmed it, this reprint book from Kessinger Publishing (which you are looking at now), is probably based on the earlier one, which is considerably shorter than the 1850 version (basis of Wordsworth edition). For example, Chapter One of Kessinger edition is Chapter Four of Wordsworth edition and the first three chapters of the latter are completely missing from the former one.
   
   There are considerable differences between the two texts. The plot is thinner and quicker in the earlier version, in which Boy Tobias's fate is vague and the predicament of "the prisoner" at Mrs. Lovett's pie shop is less gruesome. Characters are threadbare, but still its fast-paced story seldom bores us. It is interesting to compare these two editions as the proof of how the characters are developed by anonymous writer(s) during the three years.
   
   The reprint text of Kessinger's book seems transferred from the original, but four or five phrases are missing as "illegible." No editorial notes on the content or text is attached.

No comments about American Operetta: From H.M.S. Pinafore to Sweeney Todd.

No comments about Boys Will Be Boys - The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton et al..

No comments about Black Gold (A Phil 'Sweeney' Todd Assignment).