Shear Madness

Ask any of your image-conscious homies and they'll tell you that nothing is more horrifying than a bad haircut. We know this from sad personal experience. During one soul-crushing visit to an overzealous stylist armed with shears of shame, we watched our dignity fall to the floor with each lopped-off lock.

We may have lost our pride, but at least we kept our heads – and necks – intact, unlike the wickedly deserving victims of Sweeney Todd (“The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”). Stephen Sondheim’s song-packed melodrama about the Victorian serial-killer barber was recently turned into a big-screen Hollywood flick starring Johnny Depp, and this touring theatrical production tells the oft-told tale from the perspective of the big stage at Gammage Auditorium.

The musical chronicles the story of an anti-hero wrongly sentenced to do time in Australia. Returning to find his wife dead by suicide, the scissors-wielding slasher teams up with England's worst baker to unleash a fiendish plot involving delicious meat pies with exotic ingredients.