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Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Monday, 25 November 2013
Watch Nathan Love's 'Murder, Sex, Greed' ad that's (surprisingly) about flowers
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Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Slice of Death: Murder and Cannibalism are on the Menu in this Tasty Production of Sweeney Todd
So a bald man with a family is on a rampage, killing people as he attempts to settle scores with those who have wronged him. No, it's not Walter White, the middle-aged meth cooker who, sadly, has baked the blue for the last time on Breaking Bad.
This play instead is about Sweeney Todd, the middle-aged, razor-wielding barber in 19th-century London. And this Great Lakes Theater staging of Stephen Sondheim's raucous and muscular musical is a bloody fine ride.
Even with some small wrinkles, the propulsive energy of this production catapults you into this nightmare tale, timed perfectly for the Halloween season (yes, it is a season now, not just the evening of October 31).
The operatic, plasma-drenched thriller, which first opened on Broadway in 1979, has many spurts of dark comedy. And both the chills and chortles are orchestrated with precision by director Victoria Bussert.
When the barber Benjamin Barker (under the alias Sweeney Todd) returns to London from an unjust incarceration, he learns that the corrupt judge who sentenced him has raped and destroyed his wife Lucy and claimed as a ward his daughter Johanna.
So the barber breaks real bad, deciding to slit the throat of the judge, along with pretty much anyone else who meanders into his second-floor tonsorial salon. On the plus side, this eliminates the need for investing in return-visit punch cards.
His partner in crime is Mrs. Lovett, the downstairs baker of the "worst (meat) pies in London" who has always been attracted to Barker/Todd. Slyly misleading him as to the fate of Lucy, Lovett proceeds to woo Sweeney. Soon, they bond over a plan to dispose of the bodies Todd is manufacturing by chopping them into pie filling.
This process leads to the Act 1 capper "A Little Priest," in which the duo cavort through Sondheim's clever lyrical litany of how certain professions of victims result in pies of a particular quality (piccolo player pies are piping hot).
Of course, it is mandatory to have a strong actor playing the slasher Sweeney, and Tom Ford fits the bill most capably. With his burnished bald dome gleaming (an homage to WW?), Ford quickly establishes a fierce and uncompromising presence.
And his powerful voice pops goose bumps in "Epiphany," as he plots to wreak vengeance on the corrupt rich and save the poor from their miserable lives—all through homicide. Don't you just love sociopathic reasoning?
As Lovett, Sara M. Bruner is a slim and hot-wired presence, slicing rats in half and tossing them into her popovers. While she doesn't have the strongest voice in all registers, Bruner generates plenty of laughs amid the carnage.
Todd's daughter Johanna and her young lover Anthony are well sung by Clare Howes Eisentrout and Zach Adkins. Jodi Dominick scores as the beggar lady with a past. And as Tobias Ragg, Chris Cowan triggers some feeling in the lovely "Not While I'm Around."
On the minimal downside, Mark G. Hawbecker is a particularly uninteresting Pirelli, the rival barber who turns out to be a con man. Fashioned as a cross between a steam-punk rocker and a vision out of a Tim Burton wet dream, this Pirelli is a one-note screech-fest. And as the Beadle, M.A. Taylor doesn't do much with his character or songs, outside of a well-turned glower.
It all begins on a curious note, since there is a coffin set up center stage before the singing starts. Sure, there is a cute special effect to come, but you hardly need a coffin when all the corpses are being turned into BLTs (that's brains, livers and toes). Of course, if it's just a way to mirror the coffin that is on stage in the same position at the start of Richard III, which is playing in rep at GLT, it's an inside joke that's a bit too far inside.
Nevertheless, this Sweeney latches on to the Grand Guignol style that Sondheim intended, and delivers it with gut punch energy. "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd?" Indeed, you should.
Friday, 30 August 2013
Low-caste teenager's insistence on justice for gang-rape ordeal leads to blackballing by neighbours and murder of her mother
Girl, 17, from Karnal, Haryana, was snatched last year on her way to schoolShe has accused two men of a higher caste of raping her in a moving carWeeks after she made the allegations her mother was raped and murderedHer family now ostracised by neighbours who want them to drop the case
By Damien Gayle
PUBLISHED: 00:53 GMT, 30 August 2013 | UPDATED: 00:53 GMT, 30 August 2013
A 17-year-old gang-rape survivor's insistence on justice has led a blackballing by her community and, it is alleged, her mother's murder.
The girl from Karnal in the Indian state of Haryana, who cannot be named, has been shunned by neighbours since accusing two men of a higher caste of raping her.
Even in a country racked with guilt over violence towards women, she and her father claim they have faced official indifference - and even obstruction - to their efforts to see the suspects sent to jail.
Ostracised for seeking justice: The girl from Karnal in the Indian state of Haryana, who cannot be named, has been shunned by neighbours since accusing two men of a higher caste of raping herThe victim was 16 when she was snatched from the street as she walked to school and raped by two men in a moving car.
She reported the attack to the police but three weeks later, on a date etched on to the wall of her home, her mother disappeared.
Two days later she was found dead in canal. Doctors said she too was raped before she was murdered.
Now the teenager's fight to see the men accused of her rape sent to jail has pitted her and her family against a hostile neighbourhood.
They are Dalits, India's lowest caste who are derided as 'untouchables'; the suspects, who police say also raped and killed her mother, are upper caste.
Haryana is at the front line of India's rape epidemic. At one point last year, two women were raped every single day in the state, which has a population of 25.3million.
But despite a high-profile national political drive for greater safety for women and girls on India's streets, rape convictions remain difficult to secure - a situation worsened by the politics of the country's caste system.
'We didn't compromise, that's why everyone is angry with us': The victim's widowed father, a day labourer, said neighbours had repeatedly told them to drop the charges against the suspects, who are from the upper casteThe victim's widowed father, a day labourer, said neighbours had repeatedly told them to drop the charges.
'We didn't compromise, that's why everyone is angry with us. We want the culprits to get the life sentence. Only then our struggle will be justified,' he said.
The government gave him four lakh (?4,668) compensation for his wife's murder and the rape of his daughter last year. That money has now all been spent on lawyers for the case which still drags on in a 'fast-track' court.
To compound matters, he believes that a police officer related to one of the accused tampered with evidence that is crucial to the prosecution.
The young victim now hopes to find salvation through education - although she struggles to afford school booksFor his daughter, her insistence at speaking out has had terrible consequences.
'No one speaks to me,' she told Indian news network NDTV. 'I don't talk to them. Or visit anyone. I just stay at home. What is the point?
'Nobody talks nicely to me. Even my uncle bad-mouths me. It would be better to just leave this village.'
She now hopes to find salvation through education. 'Though I am at home, I can do better than those girls who are attending school. I can still get better marks than my classmates,' she said.
'But I don't have money to buy books.'
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