SOURCE: “A Shave too Close or not Enough?,” in New York, October 2, 1989, p. 82–84.

In the following review, Simon offers a negative assessment of Sweeney Todd.

The York Theatre Company revival of Sweeney Todd, which garnered raves in its initial modest premises, has reopened at the Circle in the Square to renewed critical paeans. It strikes me as a passable bus-and-truck production, ably directed by Susan H. Schulman, but musically and histrionically undernourished and hardly worth the raptures of our loose-tongued rhapsodies. The Stephen Sondheim–Hugh Wheeler–Harold Prince show is again the best musical on or around Broadway—as it would also be anywhere from Atlantic City to Cape May—but that is about as faint as praise can get.

It should come as no surprise if I say that the two most important things about any Broadway musical are the music and the spectacle, yet it is...