[Mistress]

I was thinking, much like the Beedle, there are several different ways to play Lovett. There's Lansbury's silly but heartless Lovett who'd do anything to win Sweeney's heart, even kill. There's revival Lovett (It's pretty much the same characterization for each actress who's played the character in the revival...so LuPone and Kaye) who's far less silly, but still has the wicked sense of humour and cold heartlessness. She's also more sensual, her desire for Todd perhaps more sexual than Lansbury's. HBC's Lovett is more reserved, she quietly pines for Sweeney but is not as cold hearted as the others...she hshows genuine affection and protectivenes towards Toby. And there are several other variations done by other actresses that I haven't seen yet. Personalyl, I loved Judy Kye's revival Lovett.

Waht do you guys like in your Lovett?

[Vice]

Out of all of the Lovett interpretations I've seen, I'm rather partial to Concert LuPone. It's (from what I've seen) not quite as dark as the Revival!Lovett, but still a darker interpretation. The second on my list is Lansbury's silly Lovett. I just really love how seemingly random her train of thought is and how... bouncy she is...

I will also admit to liking the movie!Lovett, but NOT ON STAGE. It'd be... crap. The movie!Lovett is very good in the movie, and up close; but the subtleties would be lost on a stage, where subtleties aren’t quite as subtle as real life. She's a quiet Lovett, and that just wouldn't work on stage.
...
None the less, I still like her.

[Salome]

Lansbury's Lovett is perfection. she hides her deviousness and evil plans behind love and affection. Beth Fowler..who everyone seems to forget , from the first revival.Fowler was far better than LuPone's misguded performance.

[sopranodespair]

I like HBC's Lovett. I don't know. It's just easier for me to actually like her character.

[Salome]

you arent suppossed to like Lovett in the end,you should hate her.

[Little_Nell]

I still love her by the end... yeah she did a bad thing, but hey, no one's perfect!

As I've said before, there have been aspects I've loved about every portrayal of Mrs Lovett that I've seen. Lansbury will always be my favourite I think as I have always imagined Lovett to be a batty middle-aged woman, desperate for a bit of company. I have also fallen in love with HBC's Lovett though - I like the fact that she's a bit younger, more caring and it makes her unrequited love for Todd seem even more unfair.

[sopranodespair]

^
Same reasons I like HBC's Lovett

[dolbinau]

I agree that HBCs carter is good but wouldn't work at all on stage.

[Mistress]

[Kragey]

[Salome]

dont get me wrong..she is my favorite chracter in teh show too..but you dont like her..she set the whol;e thing up..sets sweeeny up for revenge...sets herself up to marry him..conceals lucy's fate from him. she is lady macbeth.

[Kragey]

[Mistress]

It's funny that you say she's Lady Macbeth....maybe that's why I liek 2005 revival Lovett best...she's very Macbeth-y, whereas Lansbury seemed to silly to really invoke that image, but I do see where you get it from. she definitely has a very similar story. Sets her 'lover' up, watches him rises, and ends up falling with him because she became as evil as he was.

[Salome]

Macbeth isnt a villian though. he is a tragic hero..its through his wife's manipulations of him, both sexual and ambition wise, that he falls from grace.

[Mistress]

Well you cna't deny that he (and Sweeney) loose that a bit when they started killing people. The women may have started it, but they kept it going so they are, in some sense villians, thought not as great villians as Lovett and Lady Macbeth.

[Salome]

they do lose it of course but they arent villians. the proper term for both Macbeth and Todd is a Tragic Hero.

[Barberous]

Lansbury is my favourite overall. For most of the OBCR, I found her performance to be a bit one-note. But when I got the twist, I realised she had kept her performance deceptively one-note on purpose, lulling me (and Sweeney) into thinking she was just wacky comic relief, to make the ending work as a real shock. OTOH, when I actually *saw* her in the 1982 DVD, I wasn't very impressed. But I think her performance choices, when done well, served the show best for a first-timer. I did like Lupone and Bonham-Carter too.

[Mistress]

[Salome]

Macbeth was an upstanding hero.a good man and a freind to his cousin Duncan.
Sweeney was aloving family man who was maikng an honest living. both were good men who turned foul due to outside deeds and influence. based on a tragic flaw in their selves

[Mistress]

Okay...you win XD...but if Macbeth's flaw was ambition, what was Sweeney's? (just curious)

[sopranodespair]

[dorykan]

I think that Patti Lupone is the most talented Mrs. Lovett that has ever played the part. Not only does she make the character COMPLETELY her own, she also is the most vocally talented.

[Mistress]

I'd run and hide if I were you before Salome hacks you to pieces...

[Salome]

I wont kick Him..i'm juyst laughing hysterically at his lack of taste and knowledge.

[The Pirate King]

I bought the '82 DVD yesterday, and having watched it, I have some strong opinioins about Lansbury's Lovett. I've always liked Lansbury as a performer, and for the most part enjoyed her performance on the OBC, though it was a little goofy.

That did nothing to prepare me for the bizarre entity that is Lansbury's stage Lovett.

I get it that she was playing a wacky character, but she does all these bizarre facial tics and seizure-like gestures that really made no sense to me. I'm thinking particularly that little thing she does in A Little Priest. You know which I mean. Her inflection on lines is bizarre, and I just did not buy her as cunning or in any way villainous, just as a crazy old lady. Stole a bit from Lucy, there.

I liked her a bit better in the second act (save for By the Sea, where she was again so weird and distracting), but overall, I can't say I'm a fan of her performance. By the end she was better, but I really have enjoyed more of what I heard from LuPone. A purchase of the concert DVD is surely in order.

[Salome]

LuPone never understands the role. plus she cant emotionally connect on stage.

A Little Priest is a music hall number and is played as such.

[The Pirate King]

[Salome]

its the opposite..Lansbury's lovett has 3 or 4 layers...very nuanced and very complex. LuPone is a one dimenional act. She doesnt undertand Lovett at all...Lansbury is always in character and always hitting the right marks. Patti is saying..look I'm patti and i'm a diva!
i hated her and cerveris.

of course she was as bad in Sweeney as she was in Sunset Blvd.

the only Lovett to come close to Lansbury's was beth Fowler in the first revival. Not as good as Angie but damned close.

[blackbird_fly]

[Salome]

perfect explaination.

[Vice]

I do agree with that. Lanbury's Lovett seems very harmless, if not a bit loony. She seems like just some harmless, slightly loony character.

I remember watching it (The Lansbury/Hearn vid.) with my Drama class, who (at that point in time) knew nothing about Sweeney. (Well.. minus myself, the teacher, and this one girl.) Everyone else went "WHUT?!" when it went into "A Little Priest". That was priceless. I love how it caught them so off guard.

I do agree that the subsequent production's Lovetts aren't as unsuspecting... But I'm biased. LuPone!Lovett is more in my singing range.

[Mistress]

My one (small issue) with Lansbury's Lovett is that she seems to throw away the romantic lines (i.e. Poor Thing, My Friends, etc.) but I;'m just a hopeless romantic myself and always liked Sensual in-love Lovetts myself...

[Borb]

I am split on the subject.
I love Angela's crazy, loony Lovett that hides her true evil until the end.

But, I also like Lupone's darker, more sexual Lovett.

Don't get me started on Helena. Worked on film, but there was not much evil present.

At the end of the day though, I prefer Angela's!

[Salome]

in order i prefer..

Lansbury
Fowler
Kaye
Carter
and last and least....Lupone

[Borb]

Crap, I forgot about Judy Kaye.

I think she took what Lupone did and made it better and expanded on it.

Don't know much abot Fowler though...

[Luc]

Call me insane, but Lansbury makes me cringe sometimes. I just really don't like the tone of her voice.

[blackbird_fly]

[Luc]

[blackbird_fly]

No, I was just confused as to whether you didn't like the tone of her regular voice (if she were being rude or something) or just the way her singing sounds

[Luc]

Ohhhh, ok I see now.
I guess when I think about it, I just don't like *some* voices she uses. Like, she sounds magnificent in Beauty and the Beast, but she just annoys the hell out of me in Sweeney Todd. Granted, the characters are COMPLETE opposites... idk.

[actor]

but Lovett shouldn't have a pleasant voice.

[dorykan]

I don't understand how one person can give Patti Lupone so LITTLE credit...she has a wonderful voice, and obviously some people think that she understands what she is doing and who she is playing...she was asked to REPRISE the role from the concert performance to the revival. She brings a dark humor to the role that wasn't there with Lansbury, Lansbury plays everything "shtick" whereas Lupone actually understands the darkness of the humor which Sondheim writes into the show.

[Not Dead Yet]

[Joshua]

[Salome]

[Mistress]

[blackbird_fly]

[Brunnhilde]

I like both Angela and Patti. Angela is jsut Angela , Helena is like a former Countess and maybe too nice and soft. But Patti is a real witch, with a great sense of humor, but not ridiculous. You can take her serious when she wants.

[Joshua]

[Brother Marvin Hinten, S.]

Quite the opposite, in fact. Patti played Patti, like she has done for ages now.

[elizabethjaneforrest]

I have to say, I prefer concert-version LuPone to Lansbury.

While I do agree that Patti was, in a sense, playing herself, I think that method worked. I think it enabled her to really play with the audience and enjoy a joke with them instead of spouting off punchines at them. While I think she was less in touch with the emotions behind the character itself, I think she was more involved with the audience and probably allowed them to have a more enjoyable time.

[Brunnhilde]

[lottielou22]

From what I've seen of Lansbury's Lovett, she is only a 3-dimensional character once you find out her motives. She doesn't really show you that she's covering things up-- I mean, I know that's the whole point of her batty facade, but she never makes you wonder if she's hiding something when you first see it, you just see a sort of looney middle-aged woman. BUT I haven't seen the entire Hearn/Lansbury show, so this is subject to change.

When I think of the actual character of Mrs. Lovett, it never occured to me to think of her as evil; I always thought of her a survivor, doing whatever it takes to make a living (hence her idea about a good way to dispose of Sweeney's victims.) some things she did selfishly, though, such as neglecting to tell Sweeney the truth about Lucy, but hey, she's human, (as someone said earlier in this topic.) She didn't strike me as being particularly deep. That's just my personal interpretation of her. When I saw the Burton movie version, HBC exactly fit the way I thought of her.

I do see why the above might not work on stage, though. and I'm not saying that she's a misunderstood heroine, either. She is, now that I'm really thinking about it, a bad person. You have to draw the line somewhere, and she didn't, nor did she care to.

[Dvarg]

[lottielou22]

man I just re-read what I wrote and that is possibly the most confused rambling I've ever read.
So, to clear things up: No, Dvarg, I didn't think that Lansbury was layered enough, because she never makes you suspect her. But, when thinking about what I thought earlier, I realized that your not suspecting her is the point. As several people have pointed out in this thread. So, just don't read the first part of my last post. And also, I didn't mean that Lansbury's Lovett facade is batty, I mean that the facade that Lansbury's Lovett has is batty. So Lansbury is playing Lovett who is acting batty. Is what I meant.[/quote]

[elizabethjaneforrest]

This video is a great tool for comparison. It really demonstrates the movie's lack of energy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8zz4AVABkM

Also, the comments left by fangirls are highly amusing. Worth a good laugh.

[dolbinau]

[GinnyWeasley201]

Helena Bonham Carter and Angela Lansbury are the two that i am patricuarly fond of.
HBC perhaps because that is how i would play mrs lovett. and lansbury cause i love her voice and the buns.

[Salome]

Film is a totally different medium..Helena could be as broad and energetic as Angie if she were directed to do so. in the film it woulsnt have worked.

Angie is by far the best..Beth Fowler next.

but Helena was great in the film medium.

[IndigoMedusa]

I loved Patti's take on the role but Angela Lansbury is and always will be the greatest Lovett of them all.

[shakalakababy]

agreed
though i think Judy Kaye is my second favorite

[IndigoMedusa]

Remember when we saw that together? Judy Kaye was brilliant!


For me, Judy and Patti are pretty close. I guess I'd have to say Judy might win over, because Patti has has other performances which were better (not saying that her Lovett wasn't fabulous, it's just that her Rose and her Evita were more fabulous)

[shakalakababy]

yes, kaye was fabulous! my favorite part of that show. As much as i love patti i think kaye's lovett is better. but no one can beat lansbury