Stephen Sondheim‘s Sweeney Todd numbers “are more like art songs than show tunes, attempts at Brechtian insight and scale, which I presume is Sondheim’s design: Anyone looking for hummable toe-tappers of the ‘chicks and geese and ducks better scurry’ variety should go play elsewhere. Only a shallow person would expect an actual melody to accompany lyrics of such nihilist significance as ‘There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit/ and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit/ And the vermin of the world inhabit it.’ This is complex, important music, people! Not for simple, cheerful folk by any means.” — from Stephanie Zacharek‘s Salon review.
