Nothing sexually lurid is visually depicted. That is left to our imagination. Lucy's rape is nothing more than Turpin with a great cape covering her, like a vampire engulfing his victim while shielding the audience from seeing something indelicate.

For all this, if you haven't seen many musicals on stage, you might wonder where the big chorus is or where the big song and dance numbers are. Stage musicals have come a long way since MGM churned out movie musicals in the early 1930s and 1940s. Smaller theaters often have to do with smaller casts due to cost and venue constraints, and dark subject matter, while it may not reach a wide audience, is tackled. Five Guys Named Moe, a 1992 Broadway musical featuring the music and lyrics of Louis Jordan, had only six men on stage.

Not all musicals are bright and cheery. In Los Angeles, the 1982 cult classic movie Eating Raoul was staged as a musical a (1992 off-off Broadway). More famously, the 1996 off-Broadway musical Floyd Collins looked at the struggle to save a man trapped in a cave in 1925. Sweeney Todd isn't the only musical about a mass murder; in 1997, Jekyll & Hyde opened on Broadway, based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel.

With all the movies becoming musicals and musicals becoming movies in recent years and the popularity of horror flicks, it's been a long wait to see this Sondheim classic on the silver screen. Burton's vision perfectly suits Sweeney Todd and his ensemble are actors who sing well enough to make this a musical and visual delight.