Scott Hendricks in a new staging of Sweeney Todd by Barrie Kosky

If revenge is a dish that eats cold, Benjamin Baker prefers it warm. Sentenced to hard labour by a corrupt judge who raped his wife and kept his daughter under his guardianship, the barber spent fifteen years feeding his heart of hatred for the good London society which he so mistreated. Returning to Fleet Street under the name of Sweeney Todd, he recovered his razors and his former local above the shop where Mrs Lovett hard-earned earns her lif…