Skepticism overtook me when I heard that Sweeney Todd (at the Barrow Street Theatre) was being given the stripped-down minimalist treatment. My first experience of it, on an outdoor stage in Holland Park, London, in the summer of 1996, remains one of the most transcendent three hours of my life. I love the show too much to see it diminished, just as I don’t want to see Lawrence of Arabia on an iPhone. Yet the feisty little production playing downtown, with only eight actors, three musicians, and one set, is an unmitigated pleasure. Stephen Sondheim’s magnificent score contains some of the most beautiful songs ever written for the stage—“Kiss Me,” “Johanna,” “Wait,” “Pretty Women”—and they’re all as enchanting as ever, while the wordplay of “A Little Priest” and “The Worst Pies in London” is terrifically pleasing. Sondheim is certainly the finest composer-lyricist in the history of the musical theater, and Sweeney Todd finds him at his peak. Imbued with the tragic weight of opera as well as the frolicsome spirit of Broadway, it may be the finest work of art written for the stage in the last half-century. Its chief competitors, in my view, are Sondheim’s other great works, such as A Little Night Music and Company.

The lively current production of Sweeney Todd takes place in a tiny theater modified to look like a dingy pie shop, with the orchestra-level ticket buyers seated at long communal tables. A gimmick that perhaps helped to draw a surprisingly