A lot of worries are going around about "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," the Tim Burton movie adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical. It opens tomorrow, and fans of Johnny Depp (and those expecting a good train wreck) are wondering if the man can sing. Having seen the movie, I can attest that he can sing just fine, if not on the level of the great stage Sweeneys (Len Cariou, George Hearn, Michael Cerveris). Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett? Ehhh, not so much. In fact, you could thumbnail the film (which is overall quite good) as: One sings, the other shouldn't.
And yet -- perspective is all, as my editor and friend Mark Feeney recently reminded me by passing along the video below. Here is Elizabeth Taylor singing "Send in the Clowns" to Len Cariou in 1978's "A Little Night Music," one of the few other Hollywood attempts to put Sondheim on screen. Liz's rendition is both mesmerizingly awful -- a cat could sing this song better soaking wet -- and a testimony to the serene assurance of star power. Nothing in the new "Sweeney" is this bad -- or this good.
