Alex Fitch has been behind an I’m Ready for my Close-up special, Looking for Sweeney Todd:
“Recently brought to the attention of a new generation of media consumers through Tim Burton’s adaptation of the musical “Sweeney Todd: The demon barber of Fleet Street”, Todd has been terrifying Londoners for over 160 years. In a monologue written by Alex Fitch, comedienne Jessica Fostekew takes us on a tour of Sweeney’s haunts both actual and real from his birth in folklore and “penny dreadfuls” to his reincarnation as the star of biographies reprinted in the Daily Mail and a grand guignol avatar in the form of Johnny Depp. Jess and Alex try to sort out the facts of Sweeney’s “life” from the fiction through a literary landscape littered with comic strips, tabloid preoccupations and rivers running red with blood... ”
Alex tells me that they quote from “Neil Gaiman’s unfinished Sweeney Todd adaptation and Penny Dreadful from Taboo 6 & 7 and also bits of Alan Moore’s notes for From Hell” during the show, so as well as the fantasy element there’s a little comics aspect in there too. The show goes out this evening at 10.30pm on Resonance FM and should be podcast afterwards via the Panel Borders site; you can also listen to the second part of Alex’s talk with Alan Moore now.
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