What is the first thing comes to mind when someone says “London”? Big Ben, Covent Garden, and The Queen?... Or it’s Dickens, Shakespeare, and Britten? No matter what is that, in every piece of classical music, in every play you will ever read, you find some dark mysterious moment, an appearance of a ghost or tragedy of the past. It might have a happy ending as most of those masterpieces have, but that mysterious dark element is still there like some catalyst which creates the story but at the same time is a story itself. 

The story of Sweeney Todd takes place in the 19th-century London. I didn’t realize it at first but it’s almost exactly the same time when Jack the Ripper was out there, in Whitechapel, hunting down his poor victims. Why is that time relation so significant to me? From the very beginning, I was thinking about night foggy streets of London where every shadow can be a danger, and you don’t know what or who might be hiding in a fog. The outdoors doesn’t mean much for this show since most of the action happens indoors. However, in exactly the same way as one is walking down those foggy streets of London, people were coming for a shave and disappearing forever. 

Personally, the location of the play means a lot; 19th century London tells the story and sets the mood. However, Stephen Sondheim says it differently: the location itself doesn’t mean much; the tragedy of the man does, and it can happen wherever and whenever.