“For what’s the sound of the world out there / Those crunching noises pervading the air?” sings the title character of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in the show’s first-act finale. He then answers his own question with relish: “It’s man devouring man, my dear / And who are we to deny it in here?”
When he directed the premiere of Sondheim and Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd on Broadway in 1979, director Harold Prince emphasized the saga’s potential for political commentary: his epic-scale production, which played at Chicago’s Arie Crown Theater in 1981, employed a sprawling network of catwalks and girders to evoke the story’s industrial-revolution setting. The “respectable” pie shop run by ruthless businesswoman Lovett served as an allegory for capitalism as economic cannibalism. Todd and Lovett—brilliantly played in the premiere by Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury—came off more as icons than characters.
Through 11/9: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM Theater 773 1225 W. Belmont 773-327-5252stage773.com $45
