Sunday in the Woods With Sweeney Todd

Is Stephen Sondheim the musical theater’s most compelling voice? Lasers may make the strongest case yet for the writer-composer, whose “Into the Woods” came out last week (and is not available on videotape).

Unfortunately, the case is made primarily from transfers of shows originally shot for television, which means that most don’t have the crisp pictures achieved in transfers of musicals on film, such as “The Music Man.” The CD-like sound, however, is excellent, and the sound in a Sondheim musical is everything, since it’s imperative to be able to hear every twist and turn of Sondheim’s intricate lyrics.

“Into the Woods” (Image Entertainment, 152 minutes, 47 chapter stops, $60) may be the best translation yet of Sondheim directly from stage to TV to laser. The same complaints critics made about the TV version--close-ups when you wanted a long shot, two-shots when you wanted a close-up--can still be made, though.

While “Into the Woods” is scheduled for major motion-picture treatment involving Jim Henson Productions, seeing the production as it was staged for Broadway gives viewers a chance to see and hear Sondheim at his sardonic best. (“Agony” is just one of the songs that turns the fairy tale on its head.) The show directed for the stage by James Lapine, who also did the book, features Tony-winner Joanna Gleason and Bernadette Peters as the two strong female leads.

Repeat viewings of Sondheim shows underline the complexity of his seemingly simplest phrases and also dispel the myth that his work is not melodic.

Among his other musicals available on extended-play laser are “Sunday in the Park With George” (Image, 147 minutes, $60, 16 chapter stops) and “Sweeney Todd” (Image, 140 minutes, $60, 29 chapter stops).

“Sunday,” which received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for drama, features Mandy Patinkin as the Pointillist artist Georges Seurat and his modern-day counterpart and Peters as his model Dot and her descendant. While one can quibble with some of the camera angles and choices, the passion and pathos of the original come through clearly.

Almost nothing prepares you for the dark vision and humor of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” which won eight Tonys in 1979. If your picture of Angela Lansbury stems solely from “Murder, She Wrote,” catch her wickedly funny portrayal of Mrs. Lovett. “A Little Priest,” her energetic duet with George Hearn, is one of the cleverest patter songs of American musical comedy.

Also available is the filmed version of the 1985 Lincoln Center “Follies in Concert” (Image, 91 minutes, $25) with Patinkin, Lee Remick, George Hearn, Elaine Stritch and Carol Burnett. Shot as a documentary for PBS, this “Follies” includes interviews with Sondheim and snippets from the show’s rehearsal. More than anything, it whets the appetite for a laser version of a fully staged production.

Image Entertainment has come up with new packaging to appeal to laser-disc collectors. It gets its first consumer test this week with the release of “The Silence of the Lambs” ($30) in a laser “DigiPak.”

Similar to the DigiPak storage designed for CDs, this packaging treats lasers with the kind of respect they give film, discouraging fingerprinting and scratching. The disc nestles inside recessed plastic, providing more protection than paper sleeves thrust inside cardboard. It’s easy to remove--and reinsert--from the snap-center that keeps it in place.