The January 15th issue of TIME OUT LONDON pays tribute to SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET with a diverting audiowalk that “takes you inside Sweeney’s London featuring music, audio clips and interviews from Tim Burton’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s award-wining musical.” They locate Mr. Todd’s shop at 186 Fleet Street, next to St. Dunstan’s Church. To download the audiowalk, visit their website here: http://www.timeout.com/london/ Also featured in the January 15th issue is Trevor Johnston’s interview with SWEENEY TODD director Tim Burton, pictured at left with Johnny Depp at the Paris premiere of the film. Here are a few excerpts from that interview:

Time Out: It’s a seriously grim, blood-soaked story: presumably the challenge was for it not to turn silly when the characters start singing?

Tim Burton: Most musicals are camp by their very nature but the difference here was the melodrama of it, that sense of really extreme obsessive behaviour which made it feel to me much more like a silent movie with music. The material has a strong horror-movie vein to it. Johnny Depp and I were always talking in terms of old horror-movie actors like Lon Chaney and Peter Lorre. But then you get on set and you have to fit that in with a show which is about the belting-to-the-gallery type of Broadway singing. I think in the end it actually helped that we had non-professional singers. Johnny really made it his own; he keeps that extreme emotional element and still sounds like him.

Time Out: Although there are cuts, Sondheim’s well served here, since you can hear all the words for a change . . . .

Tim Burton: And you can see the actors’ eyes, which was the most important thing for me. When you look at Peter Lorre, for instance, it’s all in the eyes, and Johnny’s the same here. He looks at the camera and you see pain and anguish and anger all at once.

The Zone thanks Emma for breaking the TIME OUT story and posting the interview; you can read it in its entirety on the Porch message board or here: http://tinyurl.com/ypvcpl Thanks also to Bonnie and AnaMaria for the photo of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp from the Paris premiere; you can see a larger version here: http://tinyurl.com/ysckmw –Part-Time Poet