| Lovett's motivation | |
| Posted by: peter3053 03:17 pm EST 12/22/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Again... dramatic expediency - toros 08:44 am EST 12/22/21 | |
|
|
|
| Mrs Lovett at that point is confused and curious all at once - who is this man who looks like Barker but is behaving as if he's a stranger and doesn't know the place? The story she is about to tell is designed to get him to declare himself. So she is likely to heighten the tale to engage him - who knows how many "people" make up the "people" who say it's haunted? But let's suppose it's a lot. Who's to say enough interest was ever generated in renting a single room above a dingy pie shop, or enough money around even if there were interest? These things happen. Perhaps, too, Lovett has been hesitant to rent his room as she is reluctant to sell his razors - a sign of her abiding love for the man, "a proper artist with a knife". The haunting aspect, metaphorically, fits the imagery around Todd, the walking dead man - dead, that is, spiritually, until he can have "salvation" in revenge. Todd is pale like a ghost; rises from the grave and so on. His memory, at least, haunts the room. All of London, remember, to him, contains "ghostly shadows" - senses and clear thought are distracted universally - so haunting is also a feature of the landscape. Exactly what happened to Barker and his wife is known to few people, and fifteen years is more than half a generation. Once Todd has proven himself and advertised himself in the competition with Pirelli, that becomes the story for his shop, and the old things are driven into shadows; the fact that some could remember and suspect is captured through the Beggar Woman, of course. (And murdered customers are only those who don't have snoopy relatives, according to Lovett in the second act parlor scene.) What to me is a more striking error (erased eventually but retained in the original script and on record) is that in the middle of Act One, Johanna and Anthony are on "Friday virtually Sunday", but on the very same day in Todd's shop, "Who said the week is out yet? It's only Tuesday." The Judge and the Beadle must have taken a walk back in time during the quartet!!!! How did the error slip through drafts / rehearsals / previews / early performances??? |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: Again... dramatic expediency - toros 08:44 am EST 12/22/21 |
| Next: | re: Lovett's motivation - Guillaume 06:06 pm EST 12/22/21 |
| Thread: |
|
Time to render: 0.009393 seconds.