“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. His skin was pale and his eye was odd. He shaved the faces of gentlemen, who never thereafter were heard of again.”
This is the chilling intro to Stephen Sondheim’s gothic horror morality tale. Once considered his biggest flop, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is now his best known show. Its success transcends the macabre plot and characterizations. Much of this show’s allure is attributable to Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning score.
Cypress Lake High junior Gabriel Cruz plays Sweeney Todd. It’s his first time performing Sondheim. Based on this experience, he now utters his name in hushed, reverent tones.
“Sondheim is … the greatest composer of all time,” Cruz said. “Going into this show, I did not think I would like Sondheim as much as I do now …But I realized every single thing has intention behind it. Every single note, every single lyric is just so profound.”
“Sweeney Todd” is a study in contrasts.
Nellie Lovett is the effervescent manic counterpoint to the brooding barber, marching hypnotically into an inescapable abyss. She is played to perfection by Florida Gulf Coast University freshman Delilah Mendez.
“Sondheim makes it very intentional that you have to know your stuff,” said Mendez. “So luckily, we know our stuff.”
Florida Rep Education directors Monique Caldwell and Megan Leonard have made sure of that. From youngest to oldest, their youthful cast is spot on.
“It is really a very compelling show, and I say it's more compelling knowing that everybody is under the age of 18,” added Mendez. “It's really difficult to handle such heavy topics as death … It’s also difficult music and we have literal 16-, 17-year-olds singing one of the most difficult composers of our time and executing it beautifully. So, that would be enough reason for me as a viewer being like, wow, I want to see some 15-year-olds crush Sondheim.”
Part of what makes Sondheim vocally challenging is his infamous lyrical word play. It comes fast and furious, as in “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir.”
Ladies and Gentlemen!
May I have your attention please?
Do you wake every morning in shame and despair
To discover your pillow is covered with hair
Wot ought not to be there?
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
From now on you can waken with ease.
You need never again have a worry or care,
I will show you a miracle marvelous rare,
Gentlemen, you are about to see something wot rose
From the dead!
On the top of my head.
Sondheim juxtaposes the dissonant, broken harmonies in songs like “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” and the act one closer, “A Little Priest,” with sweet solos and his beautiful duet between Johanna and her sailor suitor, Anthony, played by Taylor Spurr and Jackson Halliburton.
I knew I'd be with you one day,
Even not knowing who you were.
I feared you'd never come,
That you'd been called away,
That you'd been killed,
Had the plague,
Were in debtor's jail,
Trampled by a horse,
Gone to sea again,
Arrested by the —
Kiss me!
“I used to be obsessed with the movie when I was a little girl,” Spurr said. “It was before I even started theater. So, I think it's really full circle that now that I'm doing it and I'm actually pursuing it …. And I love the music. The music is my favorite part. I'm a big Sondheim fan. But who isn't?”
Adding to the musical’s yin-yang quality, the fledgling romance between Johanna and Anthony stands in stark contrast to Sweeney and Lovett’s Bonnie-and-Clyde affair. But that’s the beauty of “Sweeney Todd,” says Cypress Lake High’s Jackson Halliburton, who plays Anthony.
“It's just so different from other musical theater,” said Halliburton. “Everything else you see is very colorful and poppy, and this is very different from that. It's like grim and dark, but it's exciting still. It's very cool.”
For all the music, set design and lighting, this show also places a premium on exceptional acting. Nowhere is that more in evidence than with the lead, Gabe Cruz. He’s the epitome of the menacing, single-minded Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
That comes with its real-life challenges, such as embracing the all-consuming impulses of rightful indignation and vengeance.
“It's hard to get into that kind of mindset,” Cruz admitted. “It really is, because it can take a toll on you. So, of course, I have to balance it all. I can't get too into the character. I can't let it affect my daily life. But I would say it is fun playing that type of character, though.”
“Sweeney Todd” is onstage at Florida Rep for one more weekend. Performances are Thursday, May 28 at 7 p.m.; Friday, May 29 at 7 p.m.; and Saturday, May 30 at 2 p.m.
MORE INFORMATION:
Although commonly associated with its Shakespearean-level tragic ending, countless murders, cannibalism, and pseudo-incest subplot, “Sweeney Todd” is also part hilarious and part contemptuous towards the crooked power structures of societies past and present.
Sweeney Todd follows the story of Benjamin Barker (Gabriel Cruz), a wrongfully imprisoned barber who returns to Victorian London after 15 years in an Australian penal colony to find his wife dead and his daughter, Johanna (Taylor Spurr), in the clutches of the corrupt Judge Turpin. Taking on the alias Sweeney Todd, he partners with Nellie Lovett (Delilah Mendez), a pie shop owner, who proposes a grim business idea: she can use the bodies of his victims to make meat pies. As Sweeney embarks on his bloody quest for revenge against Judge Turpin, his thirst for vengeance consumes him, leading to a tragic and violent denouement.
Over the years, a number of first names have been attributed to Mrs. Lovett. Nellie is the most common. It appears that the character traces her lineage to the Victorian penny dreadful serial “The String of Pearls,” which may have been based on an actual person. Angela Lansbury played the role on Broadway.
For as memorable as the characters may be, the score makes this musical, starting with “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” which is the opening number. “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” situates the action in London, where Todd’s legend as “the demon barber of Fleet Street” looms large.
“Sweeney was smooth,
Sweeney was subtle,
“Sweeney would blink
and rats would scuttle.”
More on Gabriel Cruz
“Sweeney has so much depth to him,” noted Cruz. “You wouldn't think that he would, but there are so many different ways you can interpret this character, so many different backstories you can have, which makes it just so fun to portray him on the stage.”
Cruz hypothesized that revenge is an emotion everyone has experienced at least once in their lives.
“Of course I would never kill anybody, but there have been times in my life where I'd be like, oh yeah, I definitely want to take revenge on someone who wronged me, talked bad about me,” Cruz conceded. “So I think about that and then hype it up on a whole other level to really commit to what my character is feeling as a result of Judge Turpin and Beadle taking away my wife and sending me to prison just so he can have her.”
Playing Sweeney also challenged Cruz vocally.
“It was definitely hard for me at first, but I've learned to definitely speak some of the lower notes and use them to reach the higher notes in the songs,” Cruz explained.
One number Cruz especially enjoys is “Little Priest,” which closes act one.
“It is a hilarious, hilarious number,” said Cruz. “So basically, kind of spoiler alert, but Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd come up with a plan to bake the people Sweeney kills into pies. And so it's this whole big, crazy, fun number where we’re talking about people who we want to stuff in the pies, like a priest or a marine general or just anybody really. So yeah, that one's really a great number. It's so much fun.”
LOVETT:
Try the friar,
Fried, it's drier!
TODD:
No, the clergy is really
Too coarse and too mealy!
LOVETT:
Then actor,
That's compacter!
TODD:
Yes, and always arrives overdone!
Cruz has been performing in theater since he was in kindergarten. He has done kids shows, junior shows, conservatories, and professional shows with Fort Myers Theatre, The Belle Theatre, Gypsy Playhouse, Broadway Palm and at Florida Rep Education. He also has attended the Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta three times.
Some select credits are Eurydice’s father in Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” for Cypress Lake High School, Anatole in “Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812" for Cypress Lake High School (for which he was runner-up for Best Actor in a Male-Identifying Role at the 2026 High School Musical Theatre Awards), “Lord of the Flies" at Cypress Lake High School, Quasimodo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” for Melody Lane Theatre, Sonny in the Alliance Youth Theatre’s production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights,” Danny Zuko in “Grease,” Oliver in “Oliver!,” “Heathers,” “Mary Poppins,” Brett in “13 the Musical,” Jack in “Finding Neverland,” Kurt/ Friedrich in “The Sound of Music” and Young Emilio in “On Your Feet.” Up next for Cruz is "Rent" at Alliance for the Arts, in which he will be portraying Angel.
More on Delilah Mendez
For Mendez, Mrs. Lovett is a bucket list dream role. Still, she confessed to misgivings when she was given a curly red wig for the part.
“I’ve had brunette hair for my entire life,” said Mendez. “So, I was like, red hair? Are you sure? With my Hispanic complexion? But when I put the rest of the costume on, I was like, yeah, they know what they're doing.”
Mendez knows what she’s doing as well. She captivates in the role both from an acting and vocal standpoint.
“I've always wanted to play a character like this,” she said during rehearsals. “I've been waiting. I'm, like, itching for a character like this.”
Past roles have typically been comedic.
“I was Carla in ‘In The Heights,’” she noted. “I'm very flattered, of course, because I like being seen as a funny woman. But this is funny dark.”
Mendez is a theater major at FGCU with a passion for the stage. In addition to “In the Heights” for the Alliance Youth Theatre, her previous credits include playwright Samara Siskind’s Bob Rauschenberg homage, “Riding Bikes,” for director Stuart Brown at Florida SouthWestern State College, Holly in “The Wedding Singer” for Cypress Lake High School, Cinderella in "Into the Woods” and the delightfully outrageous Veruca Salt in “Willy Wonka Jr.”
Mrs. Lovett is often characterized as amoral. Mendez would describe her character as transactional instead.
You know me, bright ideas just pop into my head and I keep thinking
Seems a downright shame
Shame?
Seems an awful waste
Such a nice plump frame
Wot's-his-name has
Had
Has
Nor it can't be traced
Business needs a lift
Debts to be erased
Think of it as thrift
As a gift
If you get my drift
No?
Seems an awful waste
I mean
With the price of meat, what it is
When you get it
If you get it
“So, I obviously come up with a brilliant plan and I'm really trying to like feed him into it, trying to sell him like, come on, get it,” Mendez said, laughing. “And he finally gets it, and at that point, she's just having fun, like, oh my gosh, we could kill a priest, we could kill this person. And she starts having fun with Todd because Todd at this point has been brooding about killing Judge Turpin. And she's been trying to get him to calm down and listen to her. This is the first moment that he really sees her because she comes up with this brilliant plan. So, this is one of her biggest peaks at the end of act one.”
Mendez has a mix of duets and solo numbers in “Sweeney Todd.” Both have their pros and cons. But Mendez finds duets more challenging.
“When you’re singing a duet, you have to trust that your partner knows the music as well as you do,” she explained. “If not, the littlest thing can throw us off. For example in ‘My Friends,’ he's singing in the beginning and then I join in and we feed off of each other. When he says one thing, I say another thing. If he doesn't say it in the right tempo, then I will be late or he will be early and it's just thrown off from one beat.”
Fortunately, both are consummate actors in spite of their youth and rehearsals ensure that their timing is just right.
While solos don’t have that limitation, the singer is on an island during a solo.
Like in “By the Sea.”
“It's the most difficult song for me vocally in the show,” she said.
Mendez will be taking a break from local theater following “Sweeney Todd.”
“I am going to be in the Disney College program next semester,” she said. “So I will be taking a slight hiatus from doing theater and I will be spending some time in Orlando.”
The Disney College program is a paid internship that allows college students and recent graduates to live, learn, and work at either Walt Disney World in Florida or Disneyland in California. Participants gain valuable hands-on experience, networking opportunities, and career development while working directly in the theme parks and resorts to help create Disney magic by interacting with guests in one of more than 20 roles as Disney cast members. (Roles are categorized into six areas: food service, retail and sales, attractions, entertainment, lodging and operations.)
However, Mendez will return to the stage once her time at Disney comes to an end. Playing Mrs. Lovett has given her the confidence to tackle even bigger, more challenging roles.
“One of my biggest dream roles is Veronica from ‘Heathers,’” Mendez said. “Now, I never considered myself a good singer at all whatsoever. I never thought I could sing. Obviously, Mrs. Lovett does a lot of singing. Now, having played Mrs. Lovett, I think I could play Veronica. My acting has always been my strongest suit. Now, after taking such a vocally challenging, belting, loud role, I'm like, wait, I totally could do Veronica. Dream role number one.”
More on Taylor Spurr
Taylor Spurr plays Johanna, a naïve, sheltered 17-year-old who lives in the home of Judge Turpin, who intends to take her as his bride now that she’s of age – a thought that repulses her.
The character is the polar opposite of her last role – that of double murderess Velma Kelly in “Chicago,” for which she earned runner-up honors as Best Actor in a Female Identifying Role at the 2026 High School Musical Theatre Awards.
Like Mendez, Spurr has a number of solos in “Sweeney Todd,” including “Green Finch and Linnet Bird.”
“It’s kind of a heartbreaking song,” said Spurr. “She doesn’t know what it’s like to be truly free. Judge Turpin is very strict and she’s not allowed to leave the house and be on her own. So she’s resigned herself to make the best of it.”
In her own gilded cage.
She’s appreciative of the numbers that her character sings because she is a classic high soprano.
“It's up in the rafters, which is really fun for me because I don't get to do that a lot,” she noted. “A lot of roles nowadays are belting, poppy, but not this show. It's very classic. I love it.”
In addition to “Chicago,” Spurr has played Eurydice in “Hadestown” at Lehigh Senior High School, for which she received the Best Actor in a Female-Identifying Role at the 2025 High School Musical Theatre Awards. She also appeared in “Lord of the Flies” for Florida Rep Education when she was in seventh grade.
Next up for Spurr is UCF, where she’ll pursue a BFA in musical theater.
More about Jackson Halliburton
Jackson Halliburton is a sophomore at Cypress Lake High School Center for the Arts, where he recently appeared as Pierre in “The Great Comet of 1812.” Last year, he played Harriman Spritzer in Florida Rep Education's production of “Hairspray” and his other credits include “The Trials of Ebenezer Scrooge” at Florida Rep and “Lord of the Flies” at Cypress Lake High School.
In “Sweeney Todd,” he plays Anthony Hope.
“He meets Johanna randomly, and it's love at first sight,” Halliburton said of his character. “He can't stop thinking about her and how much he wants to be with her.”
In that context, Halliburton’s two biggest musical numbers in the show are “Amiss” followed by “Johanna.”
“’Amiss’ is a song about wanting to be with Johanna and wanting her to notice him,” Halliburton noted. “’Johanna’ is him meeting Johanna for the first time, bringing her down from her captive house, showing her that he's going to free her and he's going to bring her somewhere else. Both songs are fun, but they’re also challenging. Sondheim, of course, is a challenging composer. He's very rhythmically unique, which can be a struggle and the songs are also very high, which I haven't done a lot, but I'm enjoying doing it a lot now.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
