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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
This study takes a play, a musical thriller, as an object to be discussed here. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by composer or lyricist
Stephen Sondheim and it is consisted of 198 pages. It was written by a British playwright,
Hugh Wheeler in 1979. It is based on a version of “Sweeney Todd” by Christopher Bond. The original production premiered on Broadway, March 1,
1979, directed by the renowned Harold Prince. It ran for 557 performances. In 1979, it received Tony Award Nominations for best musical, best book of a
musical, best original score, best actor and actress in a musical, best scenic design, best costume design and best direction of a musical. In 2006 Tony Award
Nomination, this musical thriller again won several awards, such as best direction of a musical and best orchestrations, and for Drama Desk Award Nomination
there are outstanding revival of music, director of a musical, orchestrations and lighting design.
Generally, this story tells about Sweeney Todd as one of the main characters, whose real name is Benjamin Barker. He uses his new alias to resume
work in his barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s struggling meat pieshop after being wrongfully sentenced to life imprisonment by the corrupt Judge Turpin. After
swearing vengeance against the judge that destroy his family apart, Mr. Todd and Mrs. Lovett plot a unique plan which slits the throat of his customers and turns the
corps over to a female accomplice in the shop below his. She then bakes the flesh of human into meat pies.
B. Approach of the Study
Since this study concerns with the psychological aspects such as the human motivation, therefore the psychological approach will be applied here.
According to Rohrberger and Woods, psychological approach is an approach that “involves the effort to locate and demonstrate certain recurrent patterns” 1971:
13. Further they say that psychology is a study of man’s life together with his mind and behavior. It shows clearly that this approach is relat
ed with human’s behavior and mind.
C. Method of the Study
This study applies a library research as the method. To support this study, there are several sources which are used. It consists of primary and secondary
sources. The primary source is a screenplay of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Hugh Wheeler, and the secondary sources are How To Analyze
Drama by Christopher R. Reaske and Motivation and Personality by Abraham H. Maslow. Besides, this study also uses related journals, and papers.
There are several steps that are taken for the analysis. First, the researcher read the screenplay, not only once, but also several times especially about the
character of Mrs. Lovett. In order to get the insight deeper, the researcher also watched the film played by Johnny Depp. While reading, the questions were
made. Second, the researcher found several theories related to the formulated question through those books and journal. The first theory was the theory of
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