“I want you, bleeders!” the barber barks at us, near the end of Act I. But we may want him even more. There’s a reason we see a major Broadway or West End revival of Sweeney Todd every five or six years. We can’t get enough of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
There are arguments to be made for Gypsy, Oklahoma! and West Side Story, but for my money, there’s no greater musical than Sweeney Todd—despite its bizarre, nihilistic subject matter. Composer Stephen Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler adapted the show from Christopher Bond’s 1970 version of the Victorian melodrama about a serial killer. In short: Benjamin Barker returns to the Dickensian hellscape of London to get revenge on the wicked Judge Turpin, who stole away his wife and daughter 15 years before. Disguised as Sweeney Todd, he drops in on Mrs. Lovett, the owner of the pie shop below his tonsorial parlor. Having always loved the poor barber, the baker resolves to help him get justice—and hits on a most unusual way for him to repay the favor.
