Sweeney Todd - coming soon on 91Èȱ¬ ONE
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Ray Winstone is Sweeney Todd
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Ray Winstone, one of the most incendiary screen presences of his generation, was born to play the part of Sweeney Todd.
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In a darkly enthralling new version of this macabre tale, written by Joshua St Johnston, the actor is quite simply in his element as the so-called Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
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In this drama, set in the mean streets of 1765 London, the infamous fictional murderer is portrayed as a seriously troubled soul.
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After a deeply traumatic childhood, where his father left him to rot in Newgate prison, Sweeney takes violent revenge against the gaoler who tormented him in prison.
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After slitting the throat of his former tormentor, the barber fights against, then ultimately succumbs to an addiction to killing.
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Later, he passes his victims' flesh on to his unwitting neighbour, the pie shop owner Mrs Lovett (played by Essie Davis), for whom Sweeney harbours a painfully unrequited love.
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She blithely cooks the meat up in pies, which she then sells to the public.
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As he relaxes on the terrace of his hotel after a hard day filming on the beautifully rendered set of the Media Pro Studios near Bucharest, 48-year-old Winstone recalls that he was immediately gripped by the story of Sweeney Todd - from the moment he opened St Johnston's script.
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"I thought it was absolutely blinding," enthuses Winstone, who has previously starred in such diverse work as Scum, Quadrophenia, Nil By Mouth, Face, Our Boy, The War Zone, Births, Marriages and Deaths, Tough Love, Sexy Beast, Last Orders, Ripley's Game, Henry VIII, Cold Mountain, King Arthur, She's Gone, and Vincent.
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"Joshua has painted a riveting picture of this man. I can't remember Sweeney's story being told in its entirety in a drama before.
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"There is the Stephen Sondheim musical version, which is lovely and jubbly, but this is a much darker and more compelling version.
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"Sure, there's plenty of claret, but at its heart this is a story about a man who has plenty of problems. Many of them stem from the fact that he's deeply in love with a woman but his past stops him being able to love her," continues Winstone, who has been happily married to Elaine since 1979 and is the doting father of three daughters, Lois (23), Jamie (19), both of whom have followed in his footsteps and become actors, and Ellie-Rae (4).
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"Sweeney is a man who's profoundly tortured. He spent 20 years in gaol for a crime he didn't commit. His brother was hung and he was raped, and so Sweeney comes out completely tormented."
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But what finally triggers the violence, Winstone reckons, is a key encounter with his father.
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"Sweeney's brother was hanged aged 12 because of their dad. There is a scene in the drama where the dad comes back. Sweeney is desperate to give him a chance to redeem himself, but the self-pitying father doesn't take it.
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"His dad is his blood and all Sweeney wants is for him to apologise. In that moment, everything might have been all right, but it isn't..."
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According to Winstone, Sweeney is further alienated by his confused yet intense relationship with his neighbour, Mrs Lovett.
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"From the moment Sweeney sees Mrs Lovett, he thinks of her as an angel. He falls in love with her, but she becomes like a prostitute and starts taking other lovers.
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"He watches her with other men through a hole in the wall. That fuels his anger, and he starts to kill these men. He thinks what he's doing is alright because he's getting back at the people who run the world and they deserve it. It's fair to say that he's a pretty mixed-up guy!"
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For all that, because Winstone is such a mesmerizing actor, we begin to feel for Sweeney's plight during the course of this drama.
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"I'm not asking anyone to sympathise with him," reflects Ray, who loved filming in Romania and made many good friends there.
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"But like the men I played in Nil By Mouth and The War Zone, he's a character you may find yourself feeling sorry for. They're all love stories. As an actor, you just play the truth of the moment. But in the process, viewers may fall for Sweeney, and may end up questioning themselves."
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Because of his sheer physicality, Ray has often been cast as this type of extreme person.
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"They're the best characters to play because there are so many layers to them," suggests the actor, who is soon to be seen in three new films: Martin Scorsese's The Departed; Beowulf, directed by Robert Zemeckis; and The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat, with a screenplay and music by Nick Cave.
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"Men like that are interesting emotionally. The great thing about these men is finding the weakness in them. The weakness, not the strength, is the most interesting side to any person because that's the one they try to hide."
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All the same, is Ray concerned about the unvarnished depiction of murder in Sweeney Todd? No. He believes that in order to remain truthful, a drama cannot airbrush out the extreme effects of violence.
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"We're not glorifying murder in Sweeney Todd," maintains Ray, who, like his screen alter ego, is a Londoner born and bred.
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"These sorts of things happen. We show it, and it isn't nice. But when people hit each other with chairs, they don't just get up again as though nothing has happened.
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"The minute you start to compromise, you've lost it. You go for the truth of the character and don't worry about who you're going to upset.
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"That's the thing about censorship. If you're making a film like that, holding back would be like cutting the bottom off a Picasso painting."
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Ray concludes that there is a long history of writers unambiguously portraying violent deeds.
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"What did Shakespeare write about? Exactly those subjects which are covered in this drama.
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"All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. Alas, poor Yorick, that's about death. And in Romeo and Juliet everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death."
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