Victorians loved horror, and stories of blood and revenge were always popular. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a “Penny Dreadful” entitled The String of Pearls, published in 1847, as a series of episodes sold once a week for a penny. This was disposable pulp fiction for the masses, and before the printed series was even completed, the story was being dramatized in the cheap playhouses of the back streets. These were known as the “Blood Tubs” where the voracious audiences demanded tales of savage brutality, the gorier the better. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was a perfect fit.
For those new to the mythology, Sweeney Todd is the “demon barber” who returns from fifteen years in a penal colony in Australia and sets up shop on Fleet Street, where he slits the throats of his customers and sends them down a chute to the pie shop below. Mrs. Lovett, the entrepreneurial owner of the downstairs establishment, enjoys a roaring trade grinding up the bodies and baking them into meat pies.
Todd has a history on Fleet Street, and as he gradually pieces together what happened to his wife and daughter while he was imprisoned, his blood-curdling plan for revenge on those who wronged him gradually takes shape. Events of violence and murder escalate towards an inevitable end, which has thrown audiences back into their seats ever since it first appeared on Broadway in 1979.
Stephen Sondheim saw a dramatized version written by Christopher Bond in the late 1970s, and was mesmerized by the vitality of the characters and the gruesome narrative of the plot. His musical adaptation - he called it a “Musical Thriller” - captures all the guilty pleasure of the Victorian horror and sets it to one of the most beautiful scores in modern musical theatre. Audiences are faced with the choice of whether to laugh or be outraged at the evening’s “entertainment” which offers a glimpse into the violent world of Victorian London, where death and depravity were always only one street away.
Vermont Rep’s sold out production in the Black Box of Main Street Landing offered a rare opportunity to see and hear this extraordinary work close up and personal. The stage, thrust out into the sea of cabaret tables on three sides, allowed those who wanted to be close to sit in the blood zone while rows of traditional seating behind made it possible for the more squeamish to be a little further away from the action. With a nine piece live orchestra providing the music, and the outstanding voices of Vermont Rep’s performers, it proved to be quite a theatrical event.
