Stop this pain inside

I like musicals. And I have a taste for the morbid. Which is probably why I absolutely loved Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber from Fleet Street (as opposed to Imaan, who said ‘I hate this movie!’ the moment it ended, primarily due to the amount of blood spilled throughout). I must confess that I probably laughed a little too loudly at the deaths of some of the characters, or when tales of meat pies made of pussycats (and more ‘delectable’ ingredients) came to fore but the dark humour was all done rather tastefully (no pun intended), methinks. Then again, the fact that it involved the unholy trinity of Tim Burton, a Johnny Depp who could sing surprisingly well and Helena Bonham Carter might have made me a little biased in my assessment though, as I am a huge fan of all three of them.

I have been indulging myself lately with regards to musicals. I have just purchased a ticket to watch Cats, that’ll be showing in Newcastle in a couple of weeks and I caught Wicked with Sweetie a few weeks back in London. Wicked (a story about how the Wicked Witch of the West isn’t THAT wicked and how growing up is not particularly easy if you are born with green skin) was a lot better than I had expected it to be – the rather enjoyable songs and music had a slightly more modern touch to it as compared to the previous musicals I had seen (granted, all of them had been showing for a decade or more by the time I watched them).

There’s something about musicals and live performances though. One can’t help but feel a shudder of excitement when Jean Valjean sings about his ethical dilemmas in ‘Who Am I?’ or a thrill of anticipation when Elphaba sings of Defying Gravity. I do admit in immersing myself a little too much into my music at times, but if you’re not going to allow yourself to succumb to the arts, then why bother watching in the first place?

One of the nicer arts performances that I had the pleasure of catching with Sweetie recently was a performance entitled ‘Four Seasons by Candlelight’ at the Barbican. As one might expect, it was performed in a hall that was awashed with the warm glow of candlelight, and the orchestral members were all dressed up in period costumes, giving the whole experience a different degree of authenticity. The fact that they were playing music from my favourite Baroque period, including our favourite Bach and Vivaldi pieces and the heart-stoppingly beautiful Canon in D by Pachelbel just made the romantic evening one of my best impulse purchases ever.