"I Knew I'd Be With You One Day"-- Anthony/Johanna Manifesto

[ladyairy.livejournal.com]

Title: I Knew I'd Be With You One Day
Author: ladyairy
Fandom: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Pairing: Anthony Hope and Johanna Barker
Spoilers: Some major spoilers for the stage musical and libretto, minor for the 2007 movie
Notes: This manifesto references the original stage production, and musical book by Hugh Wheeler. Some incidents were changed for the 2007 film, as well as, according to a friend who saw it, the revival with Patti LuPone.
Quotes with names in all caps (e.g. ANTHONY) are from stage directions from Hugh Wheeler’s book. Text in brackets (e.g. [meaning Johanna]) are notes I've added for clarification. Quotes in italics (e.g. “I have sailed the world/And seen its wonders”) are song lyrics. Plain quotes are spoken dialogue from the musical.
Word Count: 2, 835




“I have found the fairest and most loving maid that any man could dream of! And yet there are problems.”



Anthony Hope
Anthony comes to London as first mate on the Bountiful. He is surprisingly naive and innocent for an accomplished sailor, but from his first words, his name proves amazingly accurate as he is shown in contrast to the bitter Sweeney Todd, who he rescued from drowning before the musical began.

Obviously, Anthony has not endured any hardships as intense as the rest of the cast have suffered, but there are little hints that suggest life has not been as kind as Sweeney supposes. His affection for London is quite strong considering that he’s from Plymouth and appears to have spent very little time there. The swiftness and extremity of his devotion to Johanna might also indicate a desperation to be loved equal to Johanna’s own. “You are young/Life has been kind to you,” Sweeney sings to him. “You will learn.” Needless to say, by the end of the musical, Anthony has learned.

“ANTHONY is a cheerful, country-born young ship’s first mate with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.” (from the musical book by Hugh Wheeler, act one scene one)


Johanna Barker
The long-lost daughter of Benjamin Barker (now Sweeney Todd), now ward to Judge Turpin, who harbors significantly more than fatherly feelings towards her, which Johanna clearly has known about for some time. It is unclear exactly what Turpin told Johanna became of her parents- obviously not the truth, since he sent her father to jail on invented charges and raped her mother when she was a baby. In any case, Johanna never mentions them. The birds being sold outside appear to be the closest things she has to friends, since the Judge keeps her quite literally cloistered away from the outside world. This seems to have left her with a desire to face the unknown, rather than a fear of it.

“At an upper level of the Judge's mansion appears a very young, exquisitely beautiful girl with a long mane of shining blonde hair. This is JOHANNA. For a moment she stands disconsolate, then her eyes fall on the birds.” (from the musical book by Hugh Wheeler, act one scene three)



“But sir, I swear to you there was nothing in my heart but the most respectful sentiments of-“



The sailor and the princess in the tower
What Anthony and Johanna have is clearly prompted by love at first sight- something that makes sense considering Johanna’s youth and peculiar upbringing, as well as Anthony’s naïveté and romanticism. When Anthony sees her, he is struck by her immediately, singing “Ah Miss” in hopes of her seeing him. When she does, the script has this to say

“As JOHANNA turns back to go inside, their eyes meet and the song dies on her lips. A hushed moment. “

Which is interrupted by the beggar woman leaping out to beg Anthony for more money. In return for it, he finds out the mysterious girl’s name- Johanna. Since he saw her interest in the birds, he goes to the birdseller to buy one for her. “Which one sings the sweetest?” he asks. Baffled by the question, the birdseller replies that they’re all the same. After Anthony selects one, he is told (in an obvious metaphor for Johanna’s current existence) that the birds are blinded so that they can’t tell night from day and will sing all the time.

He holds up the cage to Johanna in her window, motioning that it’s a present for her. After a moment of consideration, she comes outside to receive it, and meet him. As her hand brushes against his, Anthony blurts out his feelings. “I feel you/ Johanna/I feel you/I was half convinced I’d wakened/Satisfied enough to dream you/Happily I was mistaken/Johanna…”

“They stand so absorbed with each other that they do not notice the approach of JUDGE TURPIN, followed by the BEADLE.”

Hearing Judge Turpin call out to her, Johanna quickly runs away, forgetting the cage (indicating her interest in Anthony rather than his present, thoughtful though it was). Turpin and the Beadle threaten Anthony for approaching Johanna, the Beadle killing the bird Anthony bought her, and Turpin leering at his ward before going back into the house. After such an awful display, Anthony declares “I’ll steal you/Johanna/I’ll steal you!/Do they think that walls can hide you?/Even now I’m at your window/I am in the dark beside you/Buried sweetly in your yellow hair…”

Throwing away the cage, Anthony rushes off to find a way to achieve his goals. When we next see him, he’s found Sweeney’s new shop on Fleet Street. However, he sees Johanna again before then.

In the infamous “Mea Culpa”, Judge Turpin decides, amid self-flagellation, to marry his ward, for whom he has long suppressed (without much success) sexual desires. He is so overwhelmed by this epiphany that Johanna is able to slip the key to her room out of the lock while they talk and hide it away. Interestingly, she steals the key before Turpin announces his intention to wed her, clearly implying that she was intending to sneak Anthony in even without the impetus of unwanted marriage.

"JUDGE: If I were to think that you encouraged this young rogue... [meaning Anthony]

JOHANNA (During this speech, she slips the key from the lock, hides it in her dress): I? A maid trained from the cradle to find in modesty and obedience the greatest of all virtues? Dear father, when have you ceased to warn me of the wickedness of men?"

Once the Judge has left her alone, she waits (presumably) until Anthony passes by again and, as Anthony describes it to Sweeney later, “But now this morning this key fell from her shuttered window.” Taking it, rightfully, as “the surest sign that Johanna loves me”, he happens across Fleet Street and comes upstairs, initially it seems simply to share his excitement with his only friend, Sweeney. But he is quick to point out that he needs a place to keep Johanna while he searches for a coach, once he has eloped. And once he has Sweeney’s agreement, Anthony leaves immediately, jubilant.

When he comes to Johanna, they sing “Kiss Me”, which begins with Johanna frantic over Turpin’s decree that she must marry her guardian. However, once Anthony gets her to listen to his plan to elope, she brightens and confesses “Sir I did love you/Even as I saw you/Even as it did not matter that I did not know/Your name…”

Soon all the pair can think of is kissing each other. As they fall into each other’s arms, Johanna asks Anthony’s name after he tells her he loves her. “I’ll marry Anthony Sunday/That’s what I’ll do no matter what/I knew you’d come for me one day/Only afraid that you’d forgot…(You’ll marry Anthony Sunday/That’s what you’ll do no matter what/I knew I’d come for you one day/Only afraid that you’d forgot…)”

The scene demurely changes before they part. Unfortunately, after this moment of happiness, Anthony runs to tell Sweeney that the plan is set (“She says she’ll marry me Sunday/Everything’s set/We leave tonight!”), crashing into the barbershop just as Sweeney was about to kill Judge Turpin. Turpin, realizing that Anthony is planning on eloping with his ward, immediately gets up before Sweeney can finish the job and races off to punish Johanna, only pausing to inform Sweeney that he won’t be back since “it is all too clear what company you keep”. Enraged, Sweeney kicks Anthony out.


So ends Act One for Anthony and Johanna.

In Act Two we discover that Judge Turpin has thrown Johanna into Fogg’s Asylum.

An undetermined amount of time has passed since the first act, during which Anthony appears to have done nothing but scour London up and down for Johanna (“Johanna” Reprise) Finally, he passes the asylum and hears Johanna singing.

“ANTHONY: (incredulous, overjoyed, stops in his tracks) Johanna!”

As he tries to get in, Anthony encounters the Beadle again, who he apparently does not recognize. Trying to convince the Beadle to help him, the sailor is rebuffed and threatened with arrest.

“Is there no justice in this city? Are the officers of the law as corrupt as their masters? Johanna! Johanna!”

After escaping from the policemen, Anthony goes to Sweeney once again, at a loss for what to do. Fortunately, the barber has no such confusion. Since he knows that wigmakers get their hair from the inmates at madhouses, he prepares to disguise the sailor as a convincing wigmaker’s apprentice. “We will write a letter to this Mr. Fogg requesting hair the exact shade of Johanna’s- which I trust you know?”

Poor Anthony eagerly replies “Yellow”, not actually being qualified to work in the hair trade. Realizing this, Sweeney quickly teaches him about different shades and textures. Once his brief apprenticeship is done, the barber supplies Anthony with a gun and a instructions to shoot if he has to. Anthony assures him with romantic zeal that “I’ll kill a dozen jailers if need be to set her free.”


At first, the plan seems go like clockwork, until Anthony is actually faced with the prospect of shooting Mr. Fogg.

“ANTHONY: Stop, Mr. Fogg, or I’ll fire.

FOGG: Fire and I will stop.

ANTHONY: I cannot shoot. (Losing his nerve, ANTHONY drops the gun which JOHANNA catches in mid-air. FOGG moves towards ANTHONY, raising the scissors. JOHANNA, holding the gun with both hands, shoots FOGG, who falls. She drops the gun and together she and ANTHONY run out.”

Johanna is obviously elated to see him, and can’t stop talking as they run, barely aware of the man she’s just killed or the danger she’s in (understandably, since she’s spent quite possibly more than a year in the madhouse, judging by her placing ‘Kiss Me’ as happening “last August”) while Anthony seems quite nervous (also understandably, since he’s had several run-ins with the law already and is fully capable of realizing the ramifications of Fogg’s death).

When they return to Sweeney’s parlor, Anthony appears to have filled Johanna in on the plan so far, and, disguised in sailor’s clothing, she seems rational once again. When Anthony tells her to wait while he fetches a coach, Johanna protests, “But they are after us still. What if they trace us here? Oh, Anthony, please let me come with you.” Anthony insists it’s safer for her inside than outside, while she protests that she’s in disguise. After putting his foot down again, Johanna is upset. Unwilling to leave her when she’s annoyed with him, Anthony sings, “Ah miss/Look at me, look at me miss/Oh look at me please oh/Favor me, favor me with your glance/Ah miss/Soon we’ll be, soon we’ll be gone/And sailing the seas/And happily, happily wed/In France.”

At that, she smiles, and joins in the song as they enthusiastically plan to sail the world together.

After a kiss, Anthony leaves Johanna with a promise to be “back before those lips have time to lose that smile.”

Unfortunately, he is not. While Anthony is away, Johanna is forced to hide in a trunk where she hears, if not sees, the murder of two people at the hands of Sweeney- the beggar woman (her biological mother, which she does not know) and Judge Turpin (her foster father). In the case of the latter, before his death she was treated to hearing Sweeney constantly reassure him that she was coming and willing to marry the Judge.

And if the name Benjamin Barker means anything to her, she now knows that Sweeney is her biological father. (Of course it’s entirely plausible that the name was never brought up in front of her, but we might as well address all possible traumas)

Sweeney exits the shop and Johanna climbs out of the trunk, considerably shaken- but then Sweeney turns around, having left his razor, and sees her. Realizing she must have witnessed something, he advances towards her, prepared to kill her so she won’t reveal what she knows- but he does not seem to notice that she is impersonating a boy, and certainly doesn’t realize that she’s Johanna. In the first turn of good luck Johanna has had in the entire musical, he stops, distracted by Mrs. Lovett screaming offstage

Taking the moment, Johanna leaps out of his grasp and runs out of the shop. Though there’s no way of knowing for sure what course she took, evidently she found Anthony, since the last time they appear, they’ve brought police officers to the bakehouse, where they all discover through Toby’s mad ramblings the secret of Mrs. Lovett’s success.

But the last we see of them, they’re embracing.



“I knew I’d be with you one day/Even not knowing who you were…”



Anthony and Johanna in fandom
Despite being blatantly canon (or perhaps because of it), Anthony and Johanna are not a particularly popular pairing in fandom. I admit I did not leap to shipping them immediately, probably because the first version I saw was the 2007 film, and relationships don’t happen to come across very well on the highlights recording of the original cast (my previous exposure to the show). I happen to think that Tim Burton’s movie, despite having several virtues of its own, does a terrible disservice to Anthony and Johanna. All their key scenes have been altered- in one case removed altogether (“Kiss Me”). Johanna's role in her escape has become largely passive. Their first meeting contains no actual contact with one another, Anthony drags Johanna out of the asylum without either one attempting to deal with Fogg directly, and then there’s the last scene they have in the movie, with Anthony’s failed reassurance and Johanna’s crisp, stilted little speech. What this does is essentially drain the pair of their purpose in the story. The last speech, especially, makes clear that Anthony’s film incarnation has failed in his mission- he has rescued a girl who would rather wallow in her own angst than be rescued. Not only is it a disservice to Johanna’s character, it makes her earlier actions make little sense.

Apart from this, there are many who’s initial reaction is to see Anthony and Johanna as trite, simply because they are the stereotypical young lovers of musical theater in an otherwise dark and unique show. Though this is a reasonable first impression, after another viewing there is no reason why that shouldn’t change (unless you’re seeing a production with terrible actors, but let’s assume for argument’s sake you have the best cast in the world on hand). Johanna is arguably one of the most proactive women in the entire show- she has been dealt a terrible hand in life, but she never falls into apathy and does her best to keep control of her destiny. Anthony is idealistic to the point of blatant stupidity at times, but after the events of the show, his life philosophy has to be suffering a few hard knocks. Though many have argued that they’re brought together by chance and would not stand the tests of a long-term relationship, I think they have enough in common to make a damn good try. They’re both optimists- Johanna wouldn’t have stayed alive and sane as long as she did without optimism- they both have a need for freedom (Anthony wouldn’t be a sailor if he didn’t believe in that).

Beyond that, I can’t think of any other reasons not to ship Anthony and Johanna, so I’ll give you some reasons why I do. As it is, the fandom already has a generous supply of fic and art for Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. This is understandable, since they’re arguably the most dynamic characters upon first viewing. But let’s face it- their stories have been told. There’s no future for Sweeney or Mrs. Lovett or Judge Turpin or Lucy (well, no one writes fic about her either, but I’m using her for the sake of argument). At this point all fic can do for them is re-cover old ground or create bizarre alternate timelines.

With Anthony and Johanna, there’s no such limitation. Their story is far from complete. Who knows what happens when they leave London? Who knows if they return? Who knows if the past follows them or if they go so far that no one’s heard of the demon barber of Fleet Street? There’s any number of future possibilities fic could explore, and all kinds of complex psychological reactions to their situation or potential situations. Not to mention Anthony’s untold past (already the subject of one chapter fic, linked below).

In summary, there is more to this so called standard het couple than initially meets the eye. Underneath their sweetness and devotion there is a desperation for normality and simplicity that the pair is never likely to fully achieve, considering the world they live in. The darkness around Anthony and Johanna has hardly left them untouched- the only truly distinctly good thing they have by the end of the show is each other.



Fandom


“Variations On A Friday Afternoon” http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/82/variationson.html (Only becomes A/J in the last third, sort of)
“The Three Companions of Beauty” http://community.livejournal.com/31_days/1705601.html (Adorable A/J short)
“Keys To The Kingdom” http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/394717.html?thread=21746397 (Porn with insight)
“A Lover’s Promise” http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4641941/1/A_Lovers_Promise (A poem in Anthony's perspective)
“Sailor Boy” http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4032136/1/Sailor_Boy (Our one epic fic, which is chiefly Anthony character development but does something for the A/J relationship)
 

Comments

[dangerousdame.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! I finally got into Anthony and Johanna after seeing the revival (and later the concert)...Johanna's diminished role was only one of the many reasons the movie didn't work for me.

[ladyairy.livejournal.com]

More interested people is good! I admit to enjoying the film on a kind of cracktastic "look at the pretty costumes" level, but it was the show that actually left me intrigued and wanting more.

[thehunter.livejournal.com]

Excellent manifesto! I admit that I haven't given this pairing much of a chance, probably because the only version of Sweeney Todd that I've seen recently is the movie, but you have convinced me to give them a closer look. ^^

he has rescued a girl who would rather wallow in her own angst than be rescued.

Interesting. I saw that line ("No, Anthony. They never go away.") as Johanna's response to Anthony's blind idealism regarding their future together. Whereas he seemed to think that all they had to do was get out of London for everything to be okay, Johanna understood that although they would certainly be happy together, that wasn't going to magically erase her traumatic past or the uncertainties ahead of them. I agree that Anthony failed in his mission, but I thought of it as more a result of his naivete than of any undue angst on Johanna's part.

But yes, they were horribly shortchanged in the movie. Anthony came across as a bit of a creepy stalker and Johanna was just so...passive. I tend to skip past their scenes when I watch the DVD. D:

[ladyairy.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much exactly what I set out to do, so hooray! XDDD

I suspect my own general annoyance was bleeding through a little bit there with my analysis of the movie. I'm beginning to wonder whether my problem wasn't so much with the actual line as the actress's interpretation. She seemed to be chastising Anthony at a somewhat inopportune time. That combined with her passiveness through the movie... did not especially endear that version of Johanna to me.

On the other hand, Anthony started singing at a girl who smiled at him once through what appeared to be bulletproof glass, so I shouldn't write his movie self off as a model representation either.

[analise010.livejournal.com]

Even though I'm not an Anthony/Johanna fan, this was a really great manifesto and I totally agree with there being no future for any characters but them. Great job!

[jblankbluth.livejournal.com]

This makes me happy. :D

[carey-pontmercy.livejournal.com]

You listed my fic! I think...I think that I may cry.

*collects self*

Anyway, I completely agree with this. I've been trying to articulate my thoughts about A/J since the movie came out, but I've never managed to do it as well as this.

I find that most fic about them is either relentlessly depressing (that is, Johanna is batshit insane and Anthony is too stupid to notice or too defeated to do anything and their relationship is DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED) or so fluffy that I can't help but wonder if the writers even saw the movie. A happy medium exists, fandom.

I'm also amused/distressed by all the Sweeney/Lovett shippers and Sweeney/OC writers and slash fans who say, "Anthony/Johanna is ridiculous! They have ISSUES in their relationship!"