Menchu in a role to kill for

MANILA, Philippines - We clearly remember watching Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street two years ago in a cold and darkened movie house which turned chillier and darker as the film progressed. Our movie-mate singer Anna Fegi sat transfixed, her eyes closed, listening to the music. It must have been the combination of visual horror with amazingly discordant music that caused this behavior in her. Our simpler reaction was a curdling in our stomach, which we recently experienced again while viewing Dante Mendoza’s Kinatay.

Sweeney is a tale of revenge in London in the 1800s of a serial killer on a gory rampage of slashing victims and utilizing their flesh as filling of meat pies. Kinatay, on the other hand, which gave director Brillante Mendoza our country’s first Best Director Award at Cannes, depicts the underworld in Philippines 2009 where a screaming victim is mercilessly chopped up into pieces. They are somehow similar for the violence and the message that nothing really has changed very much through the centuries and all over the world.

Johnny Depp’s bravura performance as Sweeney Todd gave him a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination, and a Golden Globe nomination for his British partner-in-crime Helen Carter as Mrs. Lovett. Now that Repertory Philippines is staging Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd musical for an entire month, we can expect a renewed interest in the Sweeney urban legend. Audie Gemora is Sweeney, Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo is his accomplice Mrs. Lovett, Franco Laurel and Lena McKenzie the romantic leads Anthony and Johanna, Liesl Batucan beggar woman, Roger Chua the main villain Judge Turpin, Robbie Guevara his cohort Beadle, Marvin Ong the young boy Tobias.

Everyone loves a gory tale apparently. Otherwise why do we have the preponderance of successful horror cum slasher cum serial killer plays and movies. And like it or not, Todd’s violent retaliation for his wife’s murder-rape, and rich and influential Judge Turpin’s amorous designs on his daughter Johanna does strike a sympathetic chord in the audience.

The authenticity of Sweeney beyond myth has been difficult to prove. Producer-writer Joshua St. Johnston, researching for his BBC movie went to the extent of visiting St. Dunstan’s Church in London’s Fleet Street where Todd supposedly stored the bodies that went into the pies but found nothing there. What he discovered was a character created in 1848 in a story String of Pearls that successfully ran for installments in a periodical that led to a play in the East End. Something like a komiks spawning a teleserye spawning a movie today. According to Johnston, the Sondheim musical came only in the ‘70s from a splicing together of the Count of Monte Cristo with The Revenger’s Tragedy. It is considered precursor of the “grusical musical” utilizing horror and macabre themes like The Phantom of the Opera, Jekyll & Hyde, Little Shop of Horrors, Dance of the Vampires, Rocky Horror Show, Rebecca, Elizabeth, and Wicked.

Todd’s lover-accomplice remains even more mysterious and therefore more interesting and more complex. Also, more evil in the sense that unlike Todd, she has no vengeance agenda. She is the actual contrabida and absolutely without conscience. Anyone who could think of serving human flesh to unsuspecting customers can only be totally amoral and demented. Some research reveals that a Mrs. Lovett of working class ran a pie shop on Bell Yard that was so celebrated its stock of veal and pork pies were sold out before 12 noon daily. A possible figment of the imagination could have added that that she and Todd were lovers with passions in bed heightened particularly after a butchering job.

Eventually, apparently, the couple are discovered and thrown in jail, but Mrs. Lovett commits suicide after confessing the entire ritual of their crime. Quite a story of psychosis. No wonder it attracted psychiatrists, writers and producers.

Menchu who plays Mrs. Lovett has also done her share of researching and has been captivated by the role ever since she played Todd’s daughter the young Johanna, romantic lead in Repertory’s first production of 1983.

“Lovett is a survivor and will do anything it takes to survive. Todd is just focused on revenge. She pushes and manipulates him. She is the silent force behind him, and yes, she has no conscience so in that sense she is the more evil one. She is also driven by her love for him. She does have a soft side. You realize at the end she did do it all for love, and you pity her,” she points out. Lovett is also responsible for goading along Todd’s psychotic behavior by lying about his wife’s actual condition.

Vocally, the role gave Menchu a wonderful stretch. “I am so far from being a Lovett both physically and vocally. The role is very character driven and I had to do a lot of vocal and physical adjustments. Like trying to find a sound for her.”

Anyone who has worked with Sondheim material is familiar with his dissonance (in contrast to consonance, meaning unstable with lack of harmony). Apart from this, Sweeney Todd is described by Sondheim himself as a “black operetta” where only 20 percent is spoken.

Menchu finds the musical one of the most difficult to sing with demands on stamina and concentration. “Many times you are singing not what the orchestra is playing and you actually sound out of tune. Many times, too, you enter completely cold with no orchestra guiding your pitch. The roles are so richly defined with the music that it gives us actors so much to work with. It’s a challenge any actor will kill to perform. My action in particular is written into the music.”

The role has 12 songs including solos, duets, ensemble numbers. In all film and stage adaptations of Sweeney Todd, the actresses who played have all earned Tony Award nominations. Menchu who has done 22 musicals since 1978 picks out Lovett next to Evita as most demanding musically, and Fosca (Passion) and Lovett as equally demanding acting wise.

Direction is by Michael Williams and Baby Barredo who was Mrs. Lovett in the original. In the artistic staff are Gino Gonzales for costumes, John Batalla for lighting, Mio Infante for the sets, with Gerard Salonga conducting the FILharmoniKA Orchestra. The musical’s attraction and relevance today is its theme of corruption and abuse of power that create all the Sweeney Todds and Lovetts of the world, reflects Menchu.

Sweeney Todd runs until Dec. 13 at Onstage, Greenbelt 1, Makati. For details, call 887-0710 or 891-9999.

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