Revenge and love powers Sweeney Todd

Everyone is familiar with that old adage “dog eat dog.” In Stephen Sondheim's musical classic, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the theme of man-eat-man grinds through three hours of bloodthirsty revenge.

In ELOPE Musical Theatre's production, the demon barber of Fleet Street resurfaces for a razor sharp spate of butchery that sets a horrific record.

There's a chilling intimacy, a stomach-churning revulsion that takes on a cartoonish quality as Sweeney slits throat upon throat with a silver barber's razor.

For the Westbury Theatre production, director/set designer Jon Shields transforms the stage into what looks like one of London's rotting wood docks decorated with gears and half a dozen steampunk clocks.

The wood is artfully greyed to suggest water damage and a fog machine pumps out smoke that brings to mind Mrs. Lovett's underground furnaces baking corpse-filled pies.

Lighting designer Brad Melrose uses candles and lanterns to emphasize the period while sliding in different lighting palettes to emphasize various moods.

Sound designer Erin Foster-O'Riordan has a delightful ear for creepy noises, and as a concept, the production elements mesh brilliantly creating the decaying and squalid world that shelters Sweeney.

The anti-hero arrives in London and stops by Mrs. Lovett's pie shop where she proudly describes her cookery, warbling Worst Pies in London.

Sweeney, an escaped convict formerly known as Benjamin Barker, lives every moment in a boiling rage. He's determined to exact revenge on the corrupt Judge Turpin who sent him to a colonial prison on trumped up charges 15 years earlier.

Sweeney takes up his barbering trade, murders his first victim, an old competitor that recognizes and blackmails him. Mrs. Lovett, an advocate against waste, suggests using the body as pie filling since meat is so expensive.

Sweeney's thirst for revenge is unquenchable. From this point on, the monster emerges and anyone that crosses his path turns into blood pie.

Randy Brososky's Sweeney is a tall, stooped figure with a lean, gaunt appearance, whoconstantly broods. He projects a detached kill stare that provides insight into the seething anger of a tradesman trampled on by pompous men of unregulated power and wealth.

A challenge for any actor, Brososky successfully creates sympathy for both the tragic figure and the monster.

While the lone anti-hero's blood lust grows darker and nastier, Mrs. Lovett increases the horror with her lip-smacking delight in baking pies.

Nicole English's Mrs. Lovett almost steals the show as a giddy entrepreneur on the rise. Girlishly infatuated with Sweeney, she dreams of married bliss in By the Sea, even as his thoughts are solely focused on vengeance.

In fact, the show depicts love in many forms. There is Sweeney's burning love for his dead wife Lucy (Nadine Veroba) and daughter Joanna (Brittany Hinse). We see Judge Turpin's (Kirk Heuser) deviant lust for his ward Johanna even as the innocent young girl sneaks kisses to Anthony (Matt Boisvert), a compassionate sailor.

Perhaps the saddest is young Toby (Everett Havet), Mrs. Lovett's devoted assistant. As they sing Not While I'm Around, a familial bond develops that is destroyed after Toby witnesses the underground horrors and slips into madness.

Clocking in at three hours, Sweeney Todd is a fiendish Victorian nightmare that runs until May 13 at the Westbury Theatre.