There’s a new barber on Fleet Street. He’s talented, brooding, and — if the rumors are true — he’s going to make a killing. Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street arrives at the Ent Center for the Arts this September, and if Theatreworks’ track record means anything, you’ll want to secure your seat before the blade drops. Following the electric, sold-out success of last season’s Cabaret, Colorado Springs’ premier professional theatre company is back — and this time, they’re going darker, bolder, and more viscerally alive than ever.
A Story That Cuts to the Bone
Set against the squalid, soot-stained underbelly of Victorian London — where corruption is currency, beggars line the cobblestones, and injustice festers in the fog — Sweeney Todd is not your typical night at the theatre. It is a fever dream. A ghost story. A love story, even, if you’re willing to look past the body count.
Benjamin Barker, wrongfully imprisoned and robbed of everything he loved, returns to London as the vengeful Sweeney Todd, razor in hand and retribution in his heart. His unlikely partner in crime — and in pie — is the irrepressible Mrs. Lovett, whose Fleet Street meat pies are, shall we say, resourcefully sourced. Together, they form one of musical theatre’s most darkly comic and deeply human duos.
What makes Sondheim’s score so enduring is its refusal to let you look away. The music is lush and menacing, tender and terrifying — sometimes within the same breath. It demands performers of rare emotional range and technical precision. Theatreworks has found exactly that.
Meet the Demon Barber — and the Woman Who Bakes Him In
Shabazz Green steps into the iconic role of Sweeney Todd, and the casting alone signals something special. To inhabit Sweeney is to carry the full weight of a man undone — not by weakness, but by a world that refused to let him be good. Green’s task is nothing short of extraordinary: to make you fear him and grieve for him in the same moment, to find the tragic hero buried beneath the rage. It’s the kind of role that reveals what a performer is truly made of, and Colorado Springs audiences are about to find out.
Opposite him, Jennifer DeDominici takes on the role of Mrs. Lovett — arguably the most deliciously complex woman in the Sondheim canon. Scheming, funny, fiercely loyal, and utterly unhinged, Mrs. Lovett is the dark comic heart of the show. She is the one who keeps the lights on, the pies in the oven, and the whole terrible enterprise moving forward. DeDominici brings to the role a performer’s gift for finding the warmth inside the wickedness — because the most unsettling thing about Mrs. Lovett isn’t what she does. It’s how much you like her anyway.
Together, Green and DeDominici promise a dynamic that is equal parts chilling and captivating — the kind of stage chemistry that makes an audience lean forward and forget to breathe.
Stripped Down to the Bleeding Edge
Director Michael Lluberes has reimagined this production specifically for the Theatreworks stage — and that word, reimagined, carries real weight here. This is not a lavish Broadway spectacle with a cast of dozens and a chandelier to spare. This is Sweeney Todd stripped to its sinew: intimate, immersive, and impossible to escape.
The Ent Center’s Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theater is a space that rewards bold choices. With scenic design by Eli Sherlock, lighting by Kate Bashore, and sound design by Patrice Mondragon, the production team has crafted a Victorian London you can practically smell — all haze and shadow and the low, creeping dread of something about to go very wrong. This is theatre that gets under your skin. The kind that stays with you on the drive home.
Why This Show, Why Now
Great art asks uncomfortable questions. Sweeney Todd asks them with a straight razor and a song. At its core, this is a story about what injustice does to a person — how it hollows them out, how it twists love into obsession and grief into violence. In Lluberes’ hands, the line between villainy and virtue isn’t just blurred. It’s gone entirely.
Theatreworks has always believed that theatre should do more than entertain — it should invite people in, challenge them, and help us see one another a little more clearly. Sweeney Todd does all three, and it does so with some of the most breathtaking music ever written for the stage.
Colorado Springs, your table is set. The pies are warm, and the barber is waiting. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street runs Sept. 10 – Oct. 4, 2026, at the Ent Center for the Arts. This production contains blood, haze, and deeply questionable meat pies. Recommended for mature audiences.
Tickets and information at entarts.org/SweeneySprings.
