Have You Been Affected By Excellent Acting?

All the time. Watching Johnny Depp in the Burton version of "Sweeney Todd" made me re-write the entire staging for later this year. I am directing a musical "Bye Bye Birdie" going up in early April, acting in another one as a benefit for the Darfur Refugee fund going up a week later, beginning rehearsals for a third, "The Fabulous Forties", for summer and since it is my turn to direct the autumn benefit I chose "Sweeney Todd" just before the Burton movie opened. I was so totally blown away by Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (and, of course, Sacha Baron Cohen's malicious counterfeit Italian) that my istant Director and I are re-cutting the script. We are incorporating many of the darker touches from the film version and making the realism a whole lot "realer". Additionally we decided to go with a full orchestra and chorus using as much of the film's orchestrations that we can. I am pre-recording the opening bars on the pipe organ in our local Presbyterian Church (it's one of the largest Cavant Bros. organs in the Southwest!) It took about ten minutes of the film to make us both look at each other, jaws dropped, realizing that this was a whole new version, a lot grimmer, and a lot more fun (for us, anyway-- we were snorting with laughter all the way through the film-- we're kind of dark-souled anyway....)