Sweeney Todd & Ritual Appetite: A Halloween Supplement
Sondheim Supplement #38
Happy Halloween! Here’s a Supplement I hope will make you feel excited—well, excited and scared. No tricks but plenty of treats today:
An exclusive essay looking at Sweeney Todd and ritual appetite(s)
A Halloween-themed all-Sondheim crossword
More from our conversation with the frightfully talented Lauren Maria Medina
Our survey of This Week in Sondheim
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Ritual Appetite in Sweeney Todd
Halloween is our annual rehearsal for sanctioned appetite: masks on, sweets exchanged, transgression turned into play. Sweeney Todd takes that grammar of ritual and feeds it back to us.
Let’s follow this rite from blueprint to benediction: first the classification engine, then the marketplace chorus, then the beautified sacrifice. Along the way, keep two touchstones in mind: taboo as the collapse of categories (Mary Douglas), and cohesion through disavowed violence (René Girard).
A Little Priest: Taxonomy as Transgression
“A Little Priest” is the comedy number that writes the rules of the ritual, its manic energy disguising the methodical work being done. The pun-spree operates as pure taxonomy: priest is “too good, at least,” lawyer is “rather nice / If it’s for a price,” the financier tastes of his corruption. Each slice of wordplay collapses the distance between human and commodity through the lubricant of rhyme.