SWEENEY TODD
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim Book by Hugh Wheeler
Sweeney Todd is one giant step for vegetarianism. Sweeney (Len Cariou), "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," slits the throats of stray clients and deposits their bodies with Mrs. Lovett (Angela Lansbury), who has them ground up and served as meat pies in her pie shoppe. This musical is a black-comedy opera with helpings of ha'penny Brecht. Its underlying theme, and épater le bourgeois tone, is that man exists only to eat or be eaten by his fellows.
Sweeney is a victim of injustice. Railroaded to Australia by Judge Turpin (Edmund Lyndeck),...