NEW YORK — Spirits tread the boards in Broadway’s new revival of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” But the ghost of “Sweeneys” past doesn’t walk among them.

Every English school kid knows the story: the murderous barber who dispatches his victims with the flick of a straight razor and then has his landlady serve up their remains in meat pies.

It’s an adaptation of a macabre tale from a “penny dreadful” (old pulp fiction) sold on the streets of London in the late 1800s. Officially it’s fiction. Others contend that, before Hannibal Lecter and even Jack the Ripper, there was a mad barber who killed and robbed his customers, many of whom did end up as pie filling.

In this revival, director John Doyle has pared Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 masterwork about murder and economical cooking to its barest essence, discarding almost all the trappings that have become synonymous with the show. The trick razors that paint bloody gashes across victims’ necks? The Rube Goldberg barber chair/chute contraption that delivers fresh corpses to Mrs. Lovett’s meat grinder? The painstakingly literal staging of sung exposition? All gone.
And reflecting on the newly energized show that emerges from these sweeping cuts, it’s good riddance. The production is visceral and intimate, seemingly perfect for touring to Kansas City and other points west (though producers have no immediate plans to take this “Sweeney” on the road).

If that seems too iffy, there is speculation in the entertainment press that actor Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton will team up on an upcoming movie musical adaptation of “Sweeney Todd,” with Depp in the title role. They’ve already paired on five major movies including “Edward Scissorhands” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

The new “Sweeney Todd” features a 10-person cast, all remaining onstage throughout. They move furniture and props to keep the action flowing briskly, and major characters blend their voices to the chorus when they aren’t center stage. The approach works flawlessly.

The production’s most revelatory feature is its orchestra, which isn’t there. Instead of the traditional pit ensemble, cast members play Sondheim’s gloriously complex and theatrical score themselves, handing off and helping each other with a spinning roster of instruments.

Most amazingly, the cast plays the score from memory, with the exception of an upstage electronic piano holding sheet music.

Gimmicky? Perhaps at first blush, but it’s a conceit that pays off. Director Doyle developed the technique during his years in small English regional theaters, where cast size and economics guide artistic decisions at every level. He’s honed it in this “Sweeney,” trading spectacle for intimacy and actual horror.

It’s nearly impossible to identify standouts in a cast so perfectly suited to the roles. Benjamin Magnuson sings as emotively as he acts playing sailor Anthony, and Lauren Molina delivers perhaps the definitive rendition of Sweeney’s stolen daughter, Johanna. When the two lovers duet both in voice and on cellos, the theatricality is exhilarating.

Mark Jacoby plays Judge Turpin, the evening’s heavy, beneath a scary veneer of gentility. Manoel Felciano turns in an understated and virtuoso performance as the simpleminded pie-baking assistant, Tobias.

Sondheim vet Michael Cerveris reclaims the title role, underscoring every action with a clear and frightening rage. With his stark bald head and deeply set eyes, Cerveris always seems just a step from total psychotic break. This is a Sweeney obviously deranged by his revenge fantasies, quite unlike the almost jovial murderer in most productions.

Though he’s a gifted singer, Cerveris shoots for a more guttural and contemporary interpretation of the score, in stark contrast to Sweeney’s customary operatic bellow. This choice adds to the menace.

At the top of the reinvention pile, Patti LuPone creates a Mrs. Lovett that finally makes sense. While Angela Lansbury’s Tony-winning performance was the stuff of Broadway legend, her Mrs. Lovett was a manic and sexless rag doll, played almost entirely for laughs.

LuPone’s Lovett certainly has its funny moments (who can’t help but laugh when a deranged doyenne in ripped fishnets toots a tuba?). But she plumbs the depths of the amoral pastry chef, exposing the weirdly obsessive Sweeney lust that Mrs. Lovett has harbored for decades. Chirping “By the Sea,” Todd nearly catatonic at her side, this Mrs. Lovett is as delusional as the barber himself.

Doyle has started from scratch. So many of his reimaginings, like the malevolent Mrs. Lovett, seem like such common sense you wonder why they’re emerging only now. It’s almost as if Doyle is the first major director to study the text of “Sweeney Todd” with an open mind.

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‘Sweeney Todd’
¦ Reviewed: Tuesday, Jan. 10
¦ Where: Eugene O’Neill Theatre, New York
¦ Tickets: $36.25-$101.25. (800) 432-7250 or .com