Barber Chair Companies

Wolf Trap Opera's sizzling 'Sweeney Todd'

By Friday, things were beyond unbearable, and the performers also had those hot stage lights to contend with. But by golly, the show did go on, at times magnificently.

For Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: A Musical Thriller , Mr. Sondheim transformed an old penny-dreadful tale and London urban legend into a kind of revenger’s tragedy. Deported to Australia by an evil judge who covets his wife and young daughter, Benjamin Barker returns to London years later to discover that his wife is apparently dead and his daughter has become the ward of the judge.

Worse still, the reprobate Judge intends to marry the Barker girl whether she likes it or not. In a fit of rage, Benjamin Barker assumes the persona of Sweeney Todd, setting up his barbershop and chair hoping to attract the judge to the edge of his finely honed razor.

Perfecting his throat-slitting technique, Sweeney dispatches many a victim en route to his goal, aided and abetted by the outwardly sweet but nefarious Mrs. Lovett.

Mrs. Lovett, finding love in a kindred dark spirit, falls in love with Todd. And with his profit-generating potential.

Mrs. Lovett is well known for making the worst meat pies in London, largely because, like today, meat is just too expensive.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street offers a solution to the less than palatable meatless pies by dispatching of his customers, who become the filling between the pastry, using the more edible parts of the freshly shaven as the chief ingredients in her suddenly famous meat pies while incinerating the rest.

Shades of the film “Motel Hell,” whose intrepid sausage-makers probably got their bright idea from Mrs. Lovett’s revised recipe.

The Wolf Trap Opera, which usually performs in the more intimate space of the Barns facility on the other side of the Dulles Toll Road, has for as long as this reviewer can remember staged one fully produced opera per year in the Filene Center.

Until recent years, that is.

With production costs rising, the company has cut back on the stagecraft, presenting concert operas or semi-staged operas in the larger space. This still gives the company’s young singers big-stage exposure while limiting the potential for red ink.