Yesterday evening watched on DVD the original ’82 production of SWEENY TODD with Hearn and Lansbury and once again couldn’t help but feel that Tim Burton’s version is a travesty. Comparisons might be odious as they say but comparing his to the original it was like soufflé to a five course banquet. Cast wise the same; Depp too young, no bottom as it used to be termed in the days of the buck, and Mrs Burton totally inadequate. One time nepotism did not pay off. All right, so these are all personal opinions, did I not have any criticisms of the original? Well … guardedly … yes … I didn’t like the juve in the original version, feeling (a) although extremely handsome somehow completely lacking in sex appeal and (b) really too old for the part. Maybe that wouldn’t have shown up on stage but in close up it did. The boy in Burton’s film was better. And a teensy weensy point – in the final chorus line-up Mister Prince had two London bobbies, one of whom was wearing spectacles and it did look so completely wrong it was distracting. Otherwise the show was as enthralling as I remember it.
There is a book published in Greece called LEARN GREEK IN TWENTY FIVE YEARS. Humph! I would normally have written that as Hmph! But my computer dictionary tells me it’s Humph! I say humph because my own attempts to learn Greek in half that amount of time amount to diddlysquat. I am no linguist unfortunately. Anyway, an interesting article in last week’s “Athens News” headed “Discovering an ancient language” all about the lesser known languages still spoken in Greece, eleven in all: Pontic, Griko - as spoken in Italy, Cretan, Cypriot Tsakonian, Cappadocian. A map of Greece shows where the various languages are still in use. There are also Arvanitic, Turkish of course, Vlach, Southern Slavic and Ladino. Of the last there are evidently still speakers not only in Greece but Israel and Turkey.
I was interested to note that Cretan is considered a separate language. I was aware that there are dialects in Crete (could 13 be true?) but a separate language? Of course there are differences to mainland Greek, for example, mountain tea that grannies swear by for the curing of all ailments, tsai tou vouna, in Crete is known as maniteras and, when I mentioned in Athens a crevatina, an overhead frame for vines, they didn’t know what I was taking about. Pronunciation of course is something different. Cretan dialect for some reason shuns the hard k. aftokinito (motor car) becomes aftoshinito, kokkino (red) becomes koshino – guess it would be too much if it became shoshino! Ochi (no) is oshi and schoni (snow) becomes shoni, and so forth and so on. So, if you are anywhere else in Greece and you hear someone speak like this you know they are from Crete, that together with any name ending in “akis” but that is another story.
Despite my opinion of Mr Burton’s “Sweeny Todd” I would still like him to have “When The Devil Rides”; much more up his street I fancy. After all no one can produce masterpieces every time.