A wronged barber in 19th-century London wielding silver razors on a mission of vengeance sings ”They all deserve to die!” in the thrilling epiphany aria that’s the first-act climax of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Thwarted just when he has the throat of the villain he most wants in his hands � the evil Judge Turpin, who sent the then-named Benjamin Barker to prison years earlier on false charges � the brooding tonsorial artist expands his killing plans to include all who sit in his barber chair. The legend of this grim reaper and the widowed baker, Mrs. Nellie Lovett, who assisted him by grinding up dead customers into meat pies has been around for over 150 years. But only Sondheim’s music and lyrics could explain the barber’s reasoning so eloquently: ”The lives of the wicked should be made brief/For the rest of us death will be a relief. In Sweeney Todd, necks must be slit, human flesh must be squished into pastries, and blood ought to spurt in fountains and rivers of death. Enter Tim Burton, who has chopped and kneaded an almost dauntingly famous theater piece into something that stands up to the screen, and has tenderly art-directed soup-thick, tomato-red, fake-gore blood with the zest of a Hollywood-funded Jackson Pollock. Burton’s adaptation, starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, isn’t the most enduringly classic Sweeney Todd (that would be the original Broadway production, with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury) or the most brilliantly original (nothing beats the deconstructed 2005 stunner, with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone). Songs have been cut and characters reproportioned in importance (the utilitarian screenplay, respectful enough of Hugh Wheeler’s original book, is by John Logan, who co-wrote Gladiator). But this opulent, attentive production is splashed with signature style and hell-bent on entertaining Sondheimites, Deppsters, ladies who heart Alan Rickman in the role of the judge, and even Borat/Ali G-loving strays who wander in to see an uncontainably antic Sacha Baron Cohen in the role of a blackmailing faux-Italian con man. It’s an impossible assignment, really, carried off with more-than-respectable panache.
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