SOURCE: A review of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in Variety, May 13–19, 1996, pp. 78–79.

The following review gives a positive assessment of a revival production of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

The Goodspeed Opera House has been decidedly tardy in mounting its first Stephen Sondheim musical. Now that it has, however, it has done so with considerable style and, particularly, musical excellence, for which musical director Michael O'Flaherty and his pit band of 10 must be given due thanks. What with its spurting blood and sundry severed body parts, Sondheim's mischievous piece of grand guignol may still be a mite hard to take by the squeamish, but given just the right edge of macabre humor via its lyrics and its staging by Gabriel Barre, this Goodspeed Sweeney Todd may well do what Goodspeed executive director Michael Price is claiming for it, i.e. bring in a new audience to...