sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2011-11-23 08:26 pm

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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.

[identity profile] schreibergasse.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
Hopefully I will be there to help with the chopping tomorrow afternoon. And hopefully before then, you will be able to get some sleep.

[identity profile] kenjari.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
I hope the cooking goes well and that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

[identity profile] ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 02:23 am (UTC)(link)
Sounds like a lovely selection of dishes. Are ye not doing the turkey thing this year? I hope the cooking goes very well. And the eating also, of course.

I'm delighted for the pleasant discovery. I've had fond feelings for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ever since the first time I saw it at eleven or so years of age, when the theatre department at the college where one of my mother's friends taught put it on.

[identity profile] ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, no, definitely turkey. These are the side and/or alternate dishes.

Ah, that's good. We're being fairly conventional--turkey, stuffing/dressing, sweet potatoes in coconut cream, brussels sprouts done in walnut oil, and cranberry-orange sauce. The first two are in the oven, the last got made yesterday, and the middle two will be done somewhere towards the end of the turkey cooking and during the resting period.

The stuffing and the cranberry sauce have already been made; tomorrow there will be potatoes.

Do you make your stuffing the day before and then stuff the bird? I'd never thought of doing it that way. We make ours as the oven is pre-heating--it's not very complex, sautéed celery and onion, stale bread, dried cranberries, and pecans, and then a bit of stock in the skillet to hold it together.

Hope the potatoes come out well, and everything else besides, of course.

I've never seen a production except the PBS tape and now this bootleg; I don't count the movie. It is a show I love very much.

I hope you can see it on stage sometime. Wish I could show you my memories of the production I saw, although I suspect those would be fairly burnished compared to the reality.

Happy Thanksgiving!
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2011-11-24 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
Those sound like delicious dishes! I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving.

My copy of A Mayse-Bikhl arrived in the mail today!

[identity profile] csecooney.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
But... But... WHERE is it preserved? Is it on YOUTUBE??? I must see this thing! I must! LEN!!!

"I have another friend!"

[identity profile] csecooney.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 01:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Am an idiot. Sometimes links don't even register! Thank you!

[identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 07:12 am (UTC)(link)
It is intense and arduous; it will be fabulous.

Nine

[identity profile] shewhomust.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 11:12 am (UTC)(link)
I have leeks; I have mushrooms; I have potatoes; I have a vegetarian dinner guest - thank you for this inspiration. I also have red cabbage, but that I knew already (mine will be cooked with beetroot). I had considered adding chestnuts to the red cabbage, but now I'm wondering about walnuts in the shepherd's pie instead...

Happy Thanksgiving!

[identity profile] ashlyme.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 02:26 pm (UTC)(link)
The meal sounds delicious (leaving out the turkey; I'm vegetarian). Have a good Thanksgiving.

Another sighting for you; my copy of A Mayse-Bikhl came this morning. I'll start on it later.

Robert Aickman has an interesting take on the Todd myth in Mark Ingestre: The Customer's Tale; have you read it?

- Ash

[identity profile] ashlyme.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I will 'fess up and tell you I've not read it since the nineties. But it avoids any seen carnage (like all Aickmans), and I seem to remember there is way more focus on Lovett than Todd, and that the barbershop has a whiff of the brothel about it. (Dammit Ash, don't mention stories you're hazy about!)

I should check out the musical.

'Ours is the season that never stays.'

Yes. I think I will like this very much.

[identity profile] teenybuffalo.livejournal.com 2011-11-24 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Lovely, I was hoping you would post about it. Must link to it myself, the world needs more Sweeney Todd. Especially so it can infest people's brains at the height of pie-making season. (The show has already ensured no one can look at straight razors without a slight qualm anymore, but pies are a lot more socially pervasive.)