Dec. 12th, 2002 09:22 am
"Oh I believe/ In pedantry!"
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muckefuckNow that I've gotten all my substanitive comments about Sweeney Todd out of the way, I can move on to the minutiae. Specifically, the accents.
I had expected seven flavours of terrible. This is usually the result when Americans (of which the cast was comprised, save Mr Terfel and an Anglo-Italian tenor) attempt to sound Cockney. Fortunately, most didn't: The romantic leads settled for generic mid-Atlantic and Judge Turpin spoke in a clear, clipped diction that underlined his social station and fastidious hypocrisy. Even Terfel settled for merely shaving his native accent of its Welsh features. Bottone, the aforementioned tenor, alternated between a broad comic Italian accent and a competent Irish one, to much merriment.
But there's no fudging Mrs Lovett: She's got to sound like she was born within earshot of the Bow Bells. Ms Christin gives it her best shot, but is often wide of the mark. I know that in IRL, a Cockney might not consistently say f for "hard" th, but if you alternate between the two on stage, it makes the accent sound even more put-on. She also shifted her "ay" sound towards "aye" without also shifting her "aye" towards "oy", which anyone who's seen My Fair Lady should know to do. And I can understand that she doesn't want to sing glottal stops, but that shouldn't stop her from speaking them; it would've gone a long way to making her sound more British and less South Bronx.
All this was made worse by her poor diction in general, which the supertitles can only do so much to remedy. And where was the dialect coach when the word gillyflower popped up in the script? I know Americans say it with a hard g. (I find this bizarre, given that the source is Old French gilofre--but it's far from our only innovative spelling pronunciation.) Brits don't. Having her repeat the wrong pronunciation three times in a row was more irritating than the screeches in Sondheim's score.
In compensation, we had a menacing greybeard with a sooty overcoat and a good, broad accent who came on stage before each act to browbeat the crowd into turning off their "fings what make noise" (i.e. cell phones). Nuphy said, "They should have him before every show!" I agree: For the first time in years, I didn't hear a single ringer during the performance
I had expected seven flavours of terrible. This is usually the result when Americans (of which the cast was comprised, save Mr Terfel and an Anglo-Italian tenor) attempt to sound Cockney. Fortunately, most didn't: The romantic leads settled for generic mid-Atlantic and Judge Turpin spoke in a clear, clipped diction that underlined his social station and fastidious hypocrisy. Even Terfel settled for merely shaving his native accent of its Welsh features. Bottone, the aforementioned tenor, alternated between a broad comic Italian accent and a competent Irish one, to much merriment.
But there's no fudging Mrs Lovett: She's got to sound like she was born within earshot of the Bow Bells. Ms Christin gives it her best shot, but is often wide of the mark. I know that in IRL, a Cockney might not consistently say f for "hard" th, but if you alternate between the two on stage, it makes the accent sound even more put-on. She also shifted her "ay" sound towards "aye" without also shifting her "aye" towards "oy", which anyone who's seen My Fair Lady should know to do. And I can understand that she doesn't want to sing glottal stops, but that shouldn't stop her from speaking them; it would've gone a long way to making her sound more British and less South Bronx.
All this was made worse by her poor diction in general, which the supertitles can only do so much to remedy. And where was the dialect coach when the word gillyflower popped up in the script? I know Americans say it with a hard g. (I find this bizarre, given that the source is Old French gilofre--but it's far from our only innovative spelling pronunciation.) Brits don't. Having her repeat the wrong pronunciation three times in a row was more irritating than the screeches in Sondheim's score.
In compensation, we had a menacing greybeard with a sooty overcoat and a good, broad accent who came on stage before each act to browbeat the crowd into turning off their "fings what make noise" (i.e. cell phones). Nuphy said, "They should have him before every show!" I agree: For the first time in years, I didn't hear a single ringer during the performance
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Actually, I was pretty unimpressed with that whole cast, which was annoying, since it's one of my favorite musicals. I still have fond memories of the first time I ever saw it--a Blackfriars production back when I was in college, with a great cast. (Since I imprinted on that version like a baby duck, I still have the vague feeling that Nicely-Nicely Johnson is supposed to be a skinny black guy and Sky Masterson is supposed to be Asian. You can imagine how surprised I was when I finally saw the movie version.)
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What she said. It was as if the actress knew she was supposed to do a non-rhotic accent, but couldn't manage to do Noo Yawk without constantly straying into some bizarre British-sounding thing. I've literally seen high-school productions with more convincing accents. (Now, despite having been born in Brooklyn and having listened to my dad and grandparents for decades, I can't do any New York accent to save my life. But they don't pay me to be in major stage productions, either.)