British Grand Guignol meets Broadway spectacular in "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street." But the "musical thriller" based on British playwright Christopher Bond's 1973 adaptation attempts to do more than shock and horrify the spectator. The sophisticated team of director Harold Prince, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and librettist Hugh Wheeler has attempted to translate the lurid theatricalism of Grand Guignol into a form approaching grand opera. The result is a horrorcomic epic employing song for much of its unfoldment….

Besides retelling the gruesome tale of the demon barber, "Sweeney Todd" seeks to set forth a parable about the squalid horrors of an England where grinding poverty pays the price of prosperity and where the law distinguishes between rich and poor. For those unfamiliar with the Victorian "penny dreadful," Sweeney … disposes of his victims with the help of a Mrs. Lovett …, who grinds up the remains as filling for...