In February 2025, The Holy Cross Department of Theatre and Dance unveiled a most audacious artistic achievement, crafting a haunting and enthralling tale of revenge and obsession.
On the subject of obsession, I attended seven out of the eight times that Holy Cross performed Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In other words, I spent around twenty-one hours absorbing everything I could from the college’s triumphant musical production. Director Meaghan Deiter infuses nuance, professionalism, and unique ideas that upend restrictive conventions of past iterations to produce a singular piece of art within the broader history of Holy Cross theater.
Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber named Benjamin Barker who returns to London under the guise of Sweeney Todd, seeking revenge on the corrupt judge who sent him to prison on a trumped-up charge in order to get his hands on Barker’s wife, Lucy. Alongside the deranged Mrs. Lovett, who runs a meat pie shop, Todd embarks on a murder spree, using his razor and barber chair to kill his victims as Lovett bakes the bodies into her pies. As the show proceeds, the absurd plot resolves into satirical cogency, giving way to the prominent—and devastating—metaphor of mankind devouring itself.
Holy Cross’ production explodes open with the entire cast of almost thirty students imploring us to “attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.” The sopranos pierce through the atmospheric, all-encompassing grasp the chorus holds over us while “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” introduces us to the vengeful, razor-wielding demon barber. This Brechtian opening, directly addressing the audience, acknowledges that we exist in the same world as the nineteenth-century Londoners up on stage. Dieter leverages this acknowledgment to impose a contemporary twist on the story, applying casting and wardrobe unbound by gender, cultural, and historical constraints.
Kurt Hultgren’s detailed costuming, Anshuman Bhatia’s sweeping set pieces, and Sondheim’s Grand-Guignol-inspired score, tackled masterfully by Scott Koljonen, all immerse us in the grimy and oppressive London. Deiter’s utilization of these elements, combined with Corey Whittemore’s lighting, kindled one of the production’s greatest strengths: the innovative use of the Luth Concert Hall. The amber-tinted venue, situated within the grander Prior Performing Arts Center, opened in Fall 2022. Building on the increasingly immersive staging of previous musicals in the venue, from Company in 2023 to Oklahoma! in 2024, Sweeney Todd uses the hall to its fullest potential. Actors spread across the space—convulsing on the floor, singing in the balcony, and climbing through the audience; the ensemble, crawling up from beneath the stage, screaming, and smearing their makeup across their faces in thrilling moments of visceral intensity. This not only elevated the show’s horror elements but also brought a level of engagement and physicality that enhanced its overall impact.
Traditionally, the production does not move around the stage all too much; however, Bhatia’s ingenious set design—a pie shop base with the barber shop on top of it, flanked by two three-story scaffolding appendages—allows for a variety of settings. Bombastic, choreography-heavy numbers like the opening of Act Two, “God, That’s Good,” juxtapose quaint tunes like “Not While I’m Around,” which involves Matt Hollatz’s Toby, the pseudo-adopted son of Todd and Lovett’s twisted nuclear family, and Bridget Campbell’s Mrs. Lovett sitting on a couch. One of the most effective applications of the set is during “Ladies In Their Sensitivities/Kiss Me,” led by the hilarious and menacing Nik Karvelas as Beadle Bamford, the Judge’s lawman. The quartet begins with The Beadle pointing Daniel Rentel’s ruthless Judge Turpin toward Sweeney for a proper shave before he re-attempts to marry his adopted daughter, Johanna (the actual daughter of Sweeney and Lucy), played elegantly by Zara Wilson. As Beadle shares his insight into women’s behavior on stage right, Johanna and her star-crossed lover Anthony, played by Michael Sheehan, formulate their plan to flee atop the second level of the scaffolding on stage left. As these micro scenes occur simultaneously, Beadle’s “Ladies in Their Sensitivities” is intercut with Johanna and Anthony’s love song, “Kiss Me.” Then, with all parties in harmony, the scenes move across one another as the lawmen ascend to the second floor of the scaffolding and the young couple moves down below, just as the quartet blends in tandem to finish the number—an intricately layered example of the show’s spirited blocking.
The most visually striking sequences of the show involve the entire cast. The shaving/tooth-pulling competition between Sweeney and the laugh-out-loud-funny Victor Torres as Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli succeeds largely because of the surrounding commotion and antics of the ensemble. In another highlight, Anthony schemes to break Johanna out of the insane asylum Turpin and The Beadle put her in. This is where Dieter and the cast have the most fun: once Johanna shoots the corrupt headmaster of the asylum, Jonas Fogg, portrayed tyrannically by Mary Grace Kelly, all hell breaks loose. Every surrounding door of the concert hall bursts open with vigorous force as the asylum patients wail and screech of the “City on Fire.” Dancers contort their bodies on stage like creepy dolls, and the hairs on my neck stand straight up. Dieter’s introduction of stand-alone dance numbers into her adaptation, something largely absent from other versions, is crucial to the dynamism of this production. Audra Carabetta, alongside assistant choreographer Rachel Golden and featured dancer Sophie Rego, conceived a particular style of dance that fit the slithering, urchin-esque undertone of the show.
As a repeat viewer, I can attest that the cast is exceedingly captivating to watch over and over again. As soon as Jimmy Duffy’s Sweeney Todd catches your eye during “Epiphany,” you feel your heart skip a beat as if he is really going to jump out at you and cut your throat. Bridget Campbell marvelously transforms into the Sweeney-obsessed lunatic Mrs. Lovett. The way she lets her body go limp as Todd waltzes her around the stage tells you all you need to know about her character. And not once did Lilly Percival let out an impassioned shrill in front of my seat that made me doubt her portrayal as an old, disturbed beggar woman. As the entire cast embodies these tortured adults, you never think for a second that any of them might be off to write lab reports or solve problem sets after the show. There is something eminently raw and beautiful about watching your peers make art in front of your eyes—a distinctive gift of being a part of the Holy Cross community, I think.
As a classic piece of musical theater, Sweeney Todd captures themes of absolute power and obsession, driving home how these forces can shape our destinies. Yet this production’s significance extends beyond the musical itself, leaving an indelible mark on the Theatre program and The Prior Performing Arts Center. This remarkable show undoubtedly exhibits the kind of multi-faceted artistic brilliance that epitomizes this new era for the arts at the College.