Sweeney Todd and Nellie Lovett’s picnic is a satiric commentary on middle-class values that seems typical, but it’s not quite what it seems. The screenplay describes an ideal setup: “Mrs. Lovett and Todd rest on a picnic blanket, just like any other couple out enjoying the fine day. Remains of a nice picnic lunch are scattered around them. Toby [a waiter in Lovett’s tavern] can be seen flying a kite a bit away.”
Sondheim’s sardonic lyrics create an illusion that helps you to momentarily forget that when Lovett sings “By the Sea,” she’s escaping madhouse London and their gruesome business: Sweeney murdering his clients while shaving their beards and mustaches, Lovett in her eatery preparing human flesh for meat pies, and Toby assiduously serving them to hungry customers. You know that Lovett is Todd’s enabler, but her chatter is believable for the moment. Though the desire for a peaceful, ordinary middle-class experience is unattainable, Lovett can’t be stopped:
I always had a dream
Ever since I was a skinny little slip of a thing
And my rich Aunt Nettie used to take me to the seaside
August bank holiday
Making little castles in the sand
I can still feel me toes wiggling around in the briney
By the sea, Mr. Todd, that’s a life I covet
By the sea, Mr. Todd, oh, I know you’d love it
You and me, Mr. T, we could be alone
In a house what we’d almost own
Down by the sea
Lovett’s dream includes her marriage to Todd. But he’s not listening. Morosely, he tells her, “Anything you say.”
For once, there aren’t any meat pies.
The cast: Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd; Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Nellie Lovett; Allan Rickman as Judge Turpin; Ed Sanders at Toby
See Tim Burton. “By the Sea,” in Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Screenplay by John Logan is based on Hugh Wheeler’s scenario for the stage musical Sweeny Todd (1979) and Christopher Bond’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1973). Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim