Don???t Give Iago a Puppy

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October 31st, 2008, 02:44 PM
Craig T Gustafson


Buster Keaton never smiled on screen after 1918. He discovered that comedy worked best if he took it seriously. He became known as a genius of the ?deadpan? style. In later years, this has come to mean that he dealt with everything expressionlessly, as if his face were an emotionless mask. Problem is, that?s not true. Every possible human emotion and reaction was visible on his face. He just didn?t smile.
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You don?t have to smile to show emotion.

Similarly, if you?re a villain, you don?t have to have something likable about you in order to be human. Iago in Othello is a rip-roaring can-do monster ? because he?s an ambitious man whose career has been stalled.
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Is that a recognizable human motivation? Yep. Is it likable? Nope. An amazing fact, but a fact: not all humans are likable and that doesn?t make them less human. There is a tendency of directors to weaken villains by giving them ?likable? qualities. I refer to this as Giving Iago a Puppy. It weakens Iago and it?s not good for the puppy.

Heroes and Villains. Or, more properly, Protagonists and Antagonists. The protagonist is the person in a show who has our sympathies. The hero. The antagonist is the force he must conquer. If you are looking at plays purely in terms of structure, in The Odd Couple, Oscar is the hero and Felix is the villain, despite the fact that they are best friends.
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It?s No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Oscar performs an act of kindness by allowing a suicidal friend to move in, and the friend proceeds to make Oscar?s life a living hell.

Women and Villainy. Directors drive me batshit when they decide that Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest has to show sincere grief for Billy Bibbit. NOOOOOOO. That?s why McMurphy tries to kill her.
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It is her cold use of Billy?s death as the ultimate power play that causes McMurphy to snap and try to kill her. She is a symbol of beaurocratic inhumanity in a profession that should be brimming with sympathy and genuine concern. So he destroys the soulless monster (more completely in the book - she lives but her power is snapped) and is rewarded by having his own humanity cut away with a lobotomy.

The one flaw in the movie Chicago (and I knew it would happen before I walked into the theatre) is that they had Fred smack Roxie around before she shot him. It made the audience want to see something happen to him. On stage, the shooting is done purely out of wounded ego. The only sympathetic characters in Chicago are Hunyak and Amos. She is executed and he is swatted like a fly & brushed aside.
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The first time I played Amos, Roxie was the wonderful Sandy Fobes. At the end, when I said, ?I still love you? and Sandy, paying no attention, said, ?They didn?t even want my picture?, one night a woman in the audience said (not whispering), ?That bitch!? Did that mean the play failed? No ? it was a personal best for both Sandy and myself to get that kind of emotional reaction.

So my thing is that actresses should embrace the pure villainy offered in juicy parts like these and bring gloriously monstrous humans to life as vividly as possible, instead of thinking that the weight of Representing All Women is on their shoulders. You don?t make Nurse Ratched more lovable by giving her a puppy. You weaken her as a character.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because a friend of mine, Marie, posted a review of a production of Sweeney Todd. Much of it I agree with, some of it I don?t. Then I came to this:

Lovett truly loves and cares for Toby even though she ultimately realizes he must die.

Wrong, wrong, no, no, uh uh and wrong. Structurally speaking, the Judge is not the main villain of Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett is. That?s why the climactic moment of the show is when Todd realizes who the villain in his life really is; what a monster she is and that she has turned him into one. It?s the moment when knowledge of What He Has Done crashes in on him. She is Iago to his Othello.

She is the only bright, chipper, sunny thing on a stage filled with gloom and doom, so she?s likable by default. But that?s it.

Love. Hmm... The person you love is screaming in incoherent agony over his destroyed life. If you truly love that person, do you:
A. Goad them into mass murder as a method of revenge ? and profit.
B. Say, ?Wait a minute ? your wife is about two blocks away. I?ll run and get her.?

When he finally sees the Monster in Her, Lovett says something like, ?Is that what you wanted? To know that she ended up a half-crazed beggar, picking food out of garbage cans?? Well, of course not. You wouldn?t want to ? oh, I don?t know ? take her home to a warm bed and give her some food.

Mrs. Lovett is the prime example of selfish, obsessive Love; the ultimate It?s All About Me. Does she have to be that way in order to survive? Yes. That?s what?s human about her ? her survival instinct. Is that likable? No. Iago destroys Othello through obsessive hatred. Lovett destroys Todd through obsessive love. She is as focused on Todd as Iago is on Othello. She loves nothing else, which is why she dies. Todd?s Love for his family is replaced by Obsession because it?s the only option Lovett allows. That?s why his death is a tragedy and hers is the villain being offed by the hero. This is the meaning of the blank, emotionless look between them at the end of the show ? the obsession is dead; the story is over.

Lovett does not  love Toby. He?s a friggin? pet. A stray dog that she found being kicked by its owner so she took it in. That?s why Not While I?m Around is the most frightening song in the show. When Toby sings it, it?s a song of love and devotion. When she sings it, the song is turned on its ear because she is immediately and coldly planning his death while using his own words of love to keep him occupied until Todd returns. In the movie, Helena Bonham-Carter is weeping all over the place and the angst is dripping into her cleavage. That saps the character?s strength.
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Mrs. Lovett is one of the greatest parts for women in musical theatre. She?s clever, murderous, callous, fun, practical, smarty-mouthed, music-hall-talented and has an over-powering obsession that drives her life. She is completely about enterprising female empowerment, and any drippy sentiment or remorse is out of place. She?s not capable of gray-area thinking. It?s black and white and she goes right for the black every time.

You can give her a puppy. But she?ll kill it without a second thought.



[ October 31, 2008 12:16 PM: Message edited by: Sgt. Bilko ]
November 19th, 2008, 01:52 PM
crhickman

I agree for the most part.

Iago is a monster of a human as are the others you mentioned. I agree that Lovett definitely treats Toby as a pet and the song is hauntingly creepy for the very reasons you mentioned. Yet i believe you are oversimplifying Lovett just a tad.
She is a pragmatist to the Nth degree, yes, but the echoes of human kindness are still a memory within her. She would not mind having actual feelings of that nature, if she could afford them, but she cannot.

Having had some very close relationships with a few sociopaths, i know that they sometimes want to understand the kinder emotions, from time to time... when it suites them.

When Lovett saves the boy after his master's death, i believe we are meant to see that there is the glimmer of maternal instinct still in her- though it is not even much of an afterthought.

When the boy threatens to ruin her plans, she knows he much go. However, i believe the fact that she showed regret was fitting. She was losing a favored pet and the thought of killing a young boy seemed to get her gorge to rising. This added to her betrayal, making it all the worse. It worked for me.

Sometimes i love the monster that is a force of nature, an out-of-control machine of death that cares nothing for what or whom it destroys. These characters, on their own, are hardly interesting, but are made much more so by the events they set into motion - e.g., Dracula.

But i also appreciate the subtleties of more complex villains. They are much more interesting.

I believe Lovett was meant to be a touch more interesting than Dracula or similar villains, but not overly so. It was a difficult line to walk. Helena may have overplayed the sympathy a bit, but not too much for my liking.

Oh! And i do not believe Lovett creates The Demon Barber; she simply sets him well on a path to which he was already headed. She sped the process along a bit, perhaps and perhaps not by much. I may be wrong. Perhaps being reunited with his wife would have changed things, but i doubt by much.
Just my 2 cents.
November 19th, 2008, 08:07 PM
Craig T Gustafson

Quote:

I believe Lovett was meant to be a touch more interesting than Dracula or similar villains, but not overly so. It was a difficult line to walk. Helena may have overplayed the sympathy a bit, but not too much for my liking.

Yeah, but you're wrong. HA!

Sweeney Todd is a melodrama. There are no Deep Characterizations involved at all. Melodramatic characters are their Types, no less and no more. For all the reasons stated, Lovett is the Bad Guy in this. And, to get back to my original argument, piling on different facets that don't belong DOES NOT make a character more interesting. She's a perfectly interesting character by being a fascinating monster.

Quote:

Oh! And i do not believe Lovett creates The Demon Barber; she simply sets him well on a path to which he was already headed.

He's been pining for his wife for fifteen years. Lovett deliberately steers him into believing that she's dead. She allows the Beggar Woman to live on the streets picking her dinner out of trash cans, instead of saying, "Hey lady, your husband is back." Who tells Todd to use customers for practice? Whose idea is it to put the bodies into pies? He doesn't have brains enough for that - he's purely a revenge machine.

This is NOT A NICE PERSON. She's an out-and-out shit. And that's fine. My whole point is that you don't NEED to like her in order to enjoy the show.

As an actor, you need to embrace a character like that and fully flesh out the evil, not mistakenly try to find sympathetic aspects. The character needs to be sympathetic to herself. It's not at all necessary for the audience to share that feeling.

Adding a "third dimension" to an intentionally two-dimensional character is like doing a high dive into a wading pool. The proper depth isn't there. You'll just get hurt and look like Yosemite Sam wanting to see Fearless Freep.

[ November 19, 2008 04:15 PM: Message edited by: Sgt. Bilko ]
November 21st, 2008, 01:36 PM
crhickman

Ahhh yer crazy! (this is fun)

There was no 3rd dimension to Lovett in the film... perhaps 2.10 dimensions, but that's about it.

I agree that in the play we were not meant to see much below what is pretty obviously beneath the surface. And so we didn't see much more in the film. Lovett feeling selfishly sad about having to "off" the boy did not stop her from going right downstairs to lock him up with the the meat.

More importantly, we are not addressing the real reason the director allowed Helena to add a bit more emotion to that moment - and i don't mean because they are married and if she didn't get her way, neither would he for a very long time. The issue is with the medium. Film, television, the written word and live performance all have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and each requires its own fineness to "reach" the audience in a satisfying way.

I have heard directors explain this point of view and have come to appreciate it. Sometimes a medium, such as film with its close-ups, stereophonic score and other features, may require the adding of just a touch more depth to a character than would normally be called for - or, indeed, desirable - in a live performance.

Purists, also known as Pains In The Neck to filmmakers, will cry foul if the movie does not begin and play out exactly as done in the original, whether play, book or what-have-you. They will say, "You cannot add depth to these characters."

The director and others involved in the production will say, "Sometimes you do!"

There is truth to the latter argument. Sometimes a cosmetic change is not enough and very often the play and film are virtually different creatures, entirely.

Sweeney Todd TDBOFS is very much a different creature from the play, as i know you know. And i recall you were okay with most of the changes.

With this in mind, i submit to you this idea:

Helena's portrayal of regret during the moment in question reached people and had a desired effect that a pure-to-the-stage-production performance would not have achieved.

Deal with it. Ha!!!

(Oh, i just had to add that last bit - so fun to taunt the lion.)

[ November 21, 2008 09:42 AM: Message edited by: Maelifisis ]