With actual shepherd on top

Today has involved a great amount of cleaning. Tonight will involve a substantial amount of cooking. Planned dishes are less complicated than last year: mushroom and leek shepherd's pie, zucchini stuffed with ricotta basil, a curried lentil, squash, and apple stew; red cabbage slaw with oranges and carrots. It would also help if I thought I were awake.

One very pleasant discovery, made last night in the course of talking theater with teenybuffalo: in 1980, someone smuggled a camcorder into the Uris Theatre in New York City.

That's the original Broadway production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. With Len Cariou, whose performance I hadn't realized had been preserved in any form outside the original cast recording—and he's in beautiful voice. Having heard him previously in A Little Night Music (1973), I had always assumed that darkened, slightly hoarse tone on the album of Sweeney Todd (1979) was a stylistic choice; then I heard that Cariou had hurt his voice in the role and figured that explained it. Apparently neither of these things is true: he had laryngitis for the recording session. Now I'm doubly glad the bootleg survives. Foreshortened and fuzzy and sometimes skippy as it is, it's absolutely amazing, and so is listening to the opening night audience as they encountered "A Little Priest" for the very first time. (They have no idea what they're getting into.)

I should go chop things up.