OH MY GOD. This is the most fucking brilliant thing I have ever seen.
It’s not just the lyrics. There are musical callbacks to Sweeney Todd all through it, Lin-Manuel’s makeup and voice, the staging callbacks, RENEE’S HAIR, my inner musical theater geek is SCREAMING.
I am not over this. If you want to FULLY get the brilliance here, you need to watch these. The opening number of the 82 production:
And “Epiphany”, one of the big Act I closers (technically “A Little Priest” closes the act, but this is a HUGE number, and Lin uses it a LOT in their version).
And seriously, if your only familarity with Sweeney Todd comes from that HORRIBLE Johnny Depp atrocity, do yourself a favor and find the 1982 version because it is amazing. This is like, formative Broadway shit for me, one of the first shows I was ever exposed to (yay cable tv).
