Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street July 23, 2009

This national tour presents the Tony Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical masterpiece. In a new conceptual take on the vengeful barber, the tale of 'Sweeney Todd' is retold in the confines of an asylum where a distraught Tobias Ragg is locked up. Using only nine chairs, a ladder, and a coffin on two wooden horses on a stage assembled of wooden planks, ten actor-musicians re-create the characters and events of Victorian era Fleet Street. The Sondheim score (with the book by Hugh Wheeler from a Christopher Bond adaptation) is performed (in full view of the audience) by the acting company, who play instruments ranging from tuba, trumpet and clarinet to cello, accordion and bass.