he bittersweet flavour at the bottom of the pies in Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical, ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’, is human. Literally of course, but also in the way that its mastermind composer lyricist made a gambit of by borrowing elements from a genre he adored: the murder mystery. He loved its codes, schemes and strategies. He put them into the grinder to produce sophisticated delicacies of modern musical theatre. His interest in murder mysteries placed one thing he understood (games, puzzles) and one thing he did not (people, human relationships) in conversation with one another. It was as if the structures of the genre facilitated a push and pull between the cleanliness of a
