ACT TWO: THE CAST (CONTINUED)
Even though she'd wanted to play Mrs. Lovett since she was a teenager, Bonham Carter didn't know if she could really sing the role. "I've always wanted to be in a musical but I never thought I could sing, except in the bathroom," she says. And so Bonham Carter gave herself three months to learn. "I went to this amazing teacher named Ian Adam," she explains. "He died recently, but he was quite famous for making actors who can't necessarily sing, singers too. Ninety percent of what he does is give you confidence and a self-belief that makes you able to open your mouth and produce a sound. From June to September of 2006, I sang every single day and I learned pretty much the whole score because I was very, very keen. I thought my only chance was to act it as well as I could. I knew Sondheim loved Judi Dench's performance in 'A Little Night Music' because it was the most well-acted. I thought 'If you go for the truth of the lyric, that's your only chance.'"
Although Burton had worked with Bonham Carter on "Planet of the Apes" and later "Big Fish" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the idea of casting her as Mrs. Lovett brought a unique set of complications, not the least being the perception he was giving her the part because she was his girlfriend. "I was very nervous about it, because it's a big role. And it wasn't just me. It was Sondheim who had to okay it," he reflects. "With a role like this, you've got to be able to really, really deliver."
"Despite the close relationship between Tim and Helena, he was absolutely not biased," insists Richard Zanuck. "I'd never seen anyone deal with someone he's so close to and be as objective as he was."
Without knowing Burton's choice, Sondheim watched all the candidates' audition tapes and also opted for Bonham Carter. "He said, 'I think she is far and away the best,'" recalls Zanuck. "Not voice-wise, because there were some real skilled singers, but voice and personality and look and everything, she was Mrs. Lovett."
"That was probably the best day of my professional life to be absolutely honest," Bonham Carter recalls. "I was in complete shock and, to be honest, Tim was, too."
"She's very brave," says Depp. "I mean, without question, that's the toughest part in the movie and she beautifully made it her own. She made Mrs. Lovett kind of vulnerable and horrific and funny and sweet. There's a lot of angles on that woman that Helena brought to her."
"I saw her as totally amoral, full of zest and full of life, and a survivor," says Bonham Carter. "Somebody who was as zestful and vital as Sweeney, was depressive and introverted, and very canny and a wannabe middle-class person. But the main thing that motors her, and the main thing that defines Mrs. Lovett is that she's tragically in love with somebody who doesn't love her back."
"I think she'd rather he didn't think about killing so much and maybe he were slightly more romantic and paid more attention to her," says Depp. "Eye contact is not one of his strongest points, even with Mrs. Lovett, bless her."
"There's something very sad and haunting and emotional and delusional about that kind of a character," explains Burton. "That's why they make such a perfect couple, really. It's a relationship movie."
But Mrs. Lovett's affections aren't directed solely towards Todd. There's also Toby (Edward Sanders), Pirelli's young assistant who becomes her charge. "I think she's got a mother obsession," says Bonham Carter. "She thinks that she's Mother Lovett, as it were, that she's Mother Nature, and she's got this maternal instinct towards people, a bit towards Sweeney, and definitely towards Toby. She's a frustrated mother. I made a bit of a thing of maybe she was a mother once and she lost her child. That might have sent her over the edge. But she's with Toby because she's a frustrated mother and because Toby looks up to her. Toby listens to her. Sweeney doesn't. So she's pretty lonely. But Toby thinks she's a lady. And that's the other thing she's always wanted -- to be a lady and be posh. Toby sees her as she likes to be seen."
To play Judge Turpin, the object of Sweeney Todd's unquenchable revenge, Burton needed an actor of substantial stature.
"The Judge is a pivotal role," says Zanuck. "He's the reason for Sweeney being sent off to prison, and when he lands back in London, he's the one guy Sweeney wants to get. We needed someone who would be an equal opponent of Johnny. He had to sing. He had to be very nasty. And nobody can be meaner, while doing very little, than Alan Rickman."
"Alan has always been one of my favorite actors, and I didn't realize this until later but he has a wonderful singing voice," says Burton. "He's also got a strange Vincent Price quality to him. He doesn't have to have a line of dialogue or be saying something to register a feeling. He's able to be bad, but you also kind of understand because there's a strange vulnerability about him as well."
"He's amazing," says Depp, "because he can be unbelievably creepy and then, in the same shot, turn his head and be super-sweet and have these puppy dog eyes. Rickman's really something."
Although singing was part of his training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, Rickman had never sung on film before. "I played the male lead in the end of finals musical and, during my early days in rep, I was in the chorus of 'Guys and Dolls,'" he reveals. "I'd always enjoyed singing, but never thought anything like this would come along. It's quite good to meet those Waterloos when you least expect it."
For Pirelli, the flamboyant barber who rumbles Barker's new identity but also hides a secret of his own, Burton cast the talented British comic actor Sacha Baron Cohen in his first film since his breakout success with "Borat: Cultural Leanings of America Make For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan." "Pirelli is the competing barber in town who has a great confrontation with Sweeney in one of the town squares," explains producer Laurie MacDonald. "He is a big comic character, so that obviously played into Sacha's gifts, but I think what people will be really surprised to see is how beautifully he sings and how strong he performs in this other world."
"We got him before we saw 'Borat,' and before he became a household name," notes Zanuck. "He asked to come in. We met him for the first time in a recording studio. I didn't realize how tall he is, about six-five or six-six, and very handsome. He told us he's always loved this show, and that he had sung early on in his life in choirs, so we asked him to step into the booth. He wasn't prepared to sing from 'Sweeney Todd,' but he sang practically all of 'Fiddler on the Roof' and did it in such a way that Tim and I were literally on the floor, buckled over. He was so funny, but despite all the laughter, we realized this guy had a great voice. He had the part right then and there as far as we were concerned. And he's wonderful. Sacha is extraordinary in the picture."
Depp agrees, saying, "Sacha is someone I'd admired greatly for a number of years, all the way back to Ali G. The guy came in and won us all over in no time. He was a pleasure to watch and a pleasure to work with. It's like meeting the new Peter Sellers. He's clearly an incredibly gifted actor."
Playing Judge Turpin's nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford is Timothy Spall, one of Britain's most respected film, television and stage actors, who starred in the "Harry Potter" series as Peter Pettigrew. Like Rickman, Spall is a graduate of RADA and had sung there as well as in Mike Leigh's Gilbert & Sullivan musical comedy "Topsy-Turvy." "My character, he's a nasty piece of work, really," says Spall of Bamford. "He's a small-time sort of parish official who has adopted authority because of his association with the Judge, who he's ingratiated himself with in many ways. He's sort of his bodyguard, his henchman. He's a procurer of various things, seemly and unseemly. Also he's a pretty violent piece of work. He's not very nice."
Rounding out the rest of the cast were a coterie of talented newcomers all making their feature film debuts: A-level student Jamie Campbell Bower (Anthony), Jayne Wisener (Johanna), who's in her second year at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and schoolboy Edward Sanders (Toby), as well as Laura Michelle Kelly, a veteran of London's West End whose theatrical credits include the musicals "Mamma Mia," "Mary Poppins" and "The Lord Of The Rings," in which she starred as Galadriel.


ACT THREE: MUSIC AND SONGS
"The music is so important," says Zanuck. "The story is being told through the singing. We were determined that every cast member use his or her own voice. Everybody sings themselves."
And yet apart from Laura Michelle Kelly, who plays the Beggar Woman, not one member of the "Sweeney Todd" cast was a professional singer.
"Stephen Sondheim writes the most complicated music in the history of the musical theatre, so for these performers it's like a mountain climber climbing Mount Everest without oxygen and without Sherpas," explains John Logan.
To give all the actors something to rehearse to, music producer Mike Higham, who had previously worked with Burton on "Corpse Bride," created a version of the score without any singing.
"To be able to hear the various layers, the string section, the horns, to hear them almost isolated, was a real eye-opener," remembers Depp who laid down most of his songs as demos in Los Angeles before recording them again in London. "I didn't realize it was that complicated. Even when I saw it on stage, it didn't seem that complicated to me, or listening to the CD. But when you hear it without the vocals, there are these really incredibly dissonant chords."
"When the harmonies happen, they're so beautiful because it sounds so unlikely," says Bonham Carter. "But what I love is that there's always an emotional sense. I've got 'Wait,' which is a lovely lullaby. It seems rather simple, but underneath it's horrible. The piano sounds so disturbed but that, of course, is the character of Sweeney's state of mind. A lot of themes and the unease and the fact it never resolves itself is a reflection of Sweeney's mind, heart and emotional landscape."
The music was recorded over a four-day period at London's Air Studios and the 64-piece orchestra assembled for the film was the largest orchestra ever to have played Sondheim's score. "We added 30 violins, some more horns, a tuba, just to give it a bigger, fatter, wider sound," Higham explains. "This is definitely its own unique thing."
The recording sessions were overseen by Stephen Sondheim and conducted by his musical supervisor Paul Gemignani. "To sit there with Tim on one side and Stephen Sondheim on the other was a fascinating experience for all of us," remembers Zanuck. "This was his arena because he can hear a flute that's slightly off, the same way that Tim can see out of the corner of his eye an extra one hundred yards away down the street."
Once the score was laid down, the songs were next. But before any of the tracks could be recorded, the cast was required to rehearse for Sondheim who flew into London for a few days to hear them. "That was really nerve-wracking," recalls Bonham Carter. "I'd been cast by him, then I had to sing for him. But thankfully, he was fine."
Adds Timothy Spall, "I can sing, but I'm not a singer. To have to sing in front of him was a bit like doing 'Hamlet' in front of Shakespeare, really."
Though Sondheim was naturally concerned about the musical adaptation, he was just as focused on the performers themselves. He explains, "I prefer actors who sing over singers who act. That doesn't always do the music good, but it does keep the story going and that's what I believe is important."
The songs were recorded over a period of six weeks throughout November and December 2006 at Air Studios and Eden Studios, London. "I did the majority of songs in demo form in the studio in Los Angeles," Depp explains, "then came to London and re-recorded them with the orchestra music. The process felt oddly natural to me, music being my first love and all."
It was Bonham Carter, however, who had not only the most songs to sing, but arguably the most complicated ones too. Her character's signature song, "The Worst Pies in London," required her not only to sing but to make an entire pie from scratch while doing it. "It's a brilliant song," she notes. "Sondheim did write it as a bravura piece for the actor. It's very complicated. It's incredibly fast and it's really brilliant at setting up her character because it sort of captures her as somebody who just goes off her tangents, is all over the place, frenetic, it just speaks to how she thinks. But equally, it gets over the fact that she's running a pie shop, it's not doing any good business and she's down on her luck. And she makes a pie at the same time as singing all this, so it's quite hard work."
Bonham Carter even took lessons in pie making from a period pie maker, and the movements of her character making the pie had to be factored into the recording sessions. "In film, when you do anything, you have to do it exactly the same because of continuity," she continues. "You have to do every single thing on the same lyric. I think I've sung that song so many times now, probably nearing 500 times, factoring in when I started singing it, the auditioning, and then recording it and making the different choices."
With the story of "Sweeney Todd" told mainly through music and lyrics as opposed to dialogue, the recording sessions became more than just about the cast getting the songs musically correct. Because the actors would be singing to their pre-recorded tracks on set, they had to find their performance in the recording booth and commit to it there and then, rather than months later during filming. "It's a very different discipline," says Depp. "The second you laid down the song you made your choices, you committed months in advance. At the same time, you've got to match yourself to it on set, but make it bigger, make it better."
Principal photography began on February 5, 2007 at Pinewood Studios in England, where Burton had previously filmed both "Batman" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." On set, the cast was required to lip-synch to the playback of the songs, a difficult enough discipline even for professional singers. "You've got to act it as if it's new and yet you are obeying something you've done in the past," Bonham Carter reveals. "Don't look as if you're remembering, illustrating or demonstrating something -- you've got to be in the moment or try and do something to keep it alive. In some ways, I thought I wanted to do it live, but the sound wouldn't be as good."
"Watching Helena and Johnny, I'm amazed," says Laura Michelle Kelly, a professional stage singer making her movie debut in "Sweeney Todd." "I wouldn't have imagined that it was the first time they'd had to sing in public view. Everyone was so confident. It helps to be able to express a lyric as opposed to singing it with no meaning and they've taken to it like ducks to water. Most people find Sondheim the hardest thing to sing, what with the tempos and the changes and the lyrical melodies; all of them are difficult. Some people try for years to do what they're doing just naturally. I learned a lot watching them."
For the film, Burton was determined to remove anything that smacked of being too "Broadway" in terms of the orchestration or the acting. "On Broadway you're sitting in an audience and a song ends with a ta-da, cue for applause, and you don't want to do that in a movie," he insists. "On one level you say you're doing a silent movie so there's a certain amount of acting style that you might say is a bit broad, but at the same time you try and cut out completely any Broadway kind of singing, although there are a couple of moments. So it was a weird dynamic to find. Being broad like you might be in a silent movie or an old horror movie without being Broadway."
"This is not a recording of a Broadway show, this is a movie," says Logan. "Tim has been hyper-conscious of anything that smacks of being too emotive, too presentational, too 'cute' in terms of the actors over-performing or playing to the back balcony, because there's a certain amount of scope to the score that could allow a performer to overact, to play too large; it's a very large story with very sweeping emotions and full-bodied music. Tim has been wonderful about keeping it real, keeping it honest and making sure these are real people going through this terribly difficult story and not shying away from the really harrowing emotions. As a theater fan and a movie fan, I think he's doing the perfect thing, saying, 'We respect the stage play, we love the stage play, it will always be there in our hearts, but this has to be first and foremost a work of cinema.'"

ACT FOUR: DESIGNING SWEENEY'S WORLD/ EPILOGUE: FIRST SCREENING/ THE LEGEND OF SWEENEY TODD/ THE MEDIA AND PENNY DREADFULS/ THE GRAND GUIGNOL TRADITION

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