A Preferable Priest!

This is the youtube capture of the song "A Little Priest" from the original theatrical production of Sweeney Todd. In my opinion this is incredibly superior to the new film version.
The acting quality here is larger, and somehow more believable even though it is more obviously theatrical. Perhaps because both George Hearn and (the magnificent) Angela Lansbury understand the full story and seem to have enjoyed making it a lot more. They have an enormous amount of fun with the scene, which is a full four minutes longer than Burton's film version and does away with the pretensions of a sinister atmosphere, using it only when required instead of hamming it up at every possible opportunity.
The extension of this scene is not wasted space, rather it is used to fully play out the comedy of the scene, for example with the addition of the characters playing with words. Lansbury provides Hearn with a starting word, for example "tinker" to which Hearn replies with a rhyme, "something pinker!" They play with this for a few moments until he is completely stumped by the word "locksmith".
The actors clearly understand the comedy of the scene and how the audience will react to it, and this feels a lot more natural to me than forcing the scene to seem sinister and dark with no real reason other than that is how Burton wanted it. Shame on you Tim! I thought you knew better than this...