(photo via Twitter by Benjamin Laird)
Ordeal Poison
You shed your complexes and beg to die…Musically!
by Ryan Hurl
Trial by Ordeal Poison- where a person is forced to shed their complexes or beg to die. Happy stuff. Some cultures, such as the Efik Uburutu people of Nigeria, administer the poisonous calabar bean, known as “Esere” in an attempt to detect guilt. A defendant who vomits up the bean is innocent. A defendant who becomes ill or dies is considered guilty. The epic tale of “Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, is certainly a trial by ordeal, the bean that awakens our own sensibilities. For the audience that attends the tale of Sweeney, the ordeal poison courses through the jugular and emerges like a geyser.
This is mostly because Steven Sondheim is a genius. A sensitive intuitive word wizard who spins fairy tale adventures that are the real-estate of the soul. What Sondheim knows, is evident in Sweeney; judgment and redemption are often his favored playground.
