Sweeney Todd is like a mediocre Victorian novel. Filled to overflowing with weird characters and wild situations, the play nonetheless contains a large number of less funny scenes along with the gems. And the time element at last predominates. After the first two hours, as after the first two volumes of Henry Esmond, no amount of wit or slapstick can keep the audience from desiring a rapid end.

Authenticity is the watchword of the production, and director David Mills sacrifices all else to the goal of recreating the melodrama just as it was performed in the 1830s. Stylized acting, with standard gestures, asides, appeals to heaven, and so on can be entertaining if thrown into a performance as comic relief. A full play of it tends to alienate even the most hardened of audiences.

Mills takes his joke too far. This is apparent from the beginning, when a brisk prologue and a bold community sing are allowed to founder on an unwieldy and interminable overture (written by Mills, who produced all the music) that adds nothing but a memory of Beyond the Fringe.

The plot deals with the dastardly career of Sweeney Todd, whose crimes are committed in a new and grisly way. The victim is seated in Sweeney's barber chair, a lever is pulled, and chug, chug, chug--the infernal contraption hauls the fellow off to be chopped up for the filling of veal pies. Sweeney's activities affect a wide circle of people including a hypocritical parson, an asylum warden, a judge, various military gentlemen, a tubercular heroine, and other hangers on.

Virtue triumphs in the end of course, and Sweeney is strapped into his own chair for its final run. Since no one who rode the contraption in the course of the evening ended up in a pie crust (not even the one Sweeney shot in the head, for good measure), it is fair to conjecture that the demon barber is yet at liberty. Veal pie, anyone?

To make such a story seem even remotely plausible requires superlative acting, and Dean Gitter, in the title role, turns in a first rate performance. His mustachio curling and villainous chortle drew gratifying hisses from the audience throughout the play, with a roaring good snarl left over for the curtain call.

Joel Martin, as Captain Mark Ingestrie, the hero, surpasses his fine job in The Gondoliers this fall, and contributes the prologue and two songs at the first entr-acte. Martin's hamming made every scene he played a delight; unfortunately, these scenes were few, and oh, so far between. Sheila K. Forde and Anne d'Harnon-court were the most creditable among the other principals; the first as a rapidly repentant veal-pie maker, the second as the slightly tipsy mother of the heroine.

Ruth Caplan, the ingenue, and Joseph Morlan, the sidekick, started with the disadvantage of the two weakest parts in the script. Neither of them managed to conquer this initial problem. Morlan's ill-timed hamming told against him when compared to Martin, and Miss Caplan, who looked remarkably like Romney's Lady Hamilton in one scene, was generally ineffective.

Of the bit players, I thought Ginio Morris, as a hag, and Godbold McDonald, as the madhouse keeper, were superb. Most effective bit-part honors must go to Joseph R. Scott, however. He played the bagpipes for five minutes in the third entr'acte.

Much of the period atmosphere resulted from Leigh Rand's sets, cleverly designed to conquer the traditional producer's nightmare over the small Agassiz Theatre. The cluttered 19th Century stage is recreated with a stream of interlocking flats, while the grim coloring and crooked street patterns set the tone for the action on stage. Lighting by the incomparable Jonathon Warburg shows off the scenery to its best advantage. Period costumes were splendid. Anita Scott must have used some Hogarth drawings as a guide for 1770 decor.

The audience began in the full spirit of the play, hissing the villain or the ranting hypocrite, singing "God Save the King," applauding patriotic aphorisms dropped by the hero, and sighing with the heroine as she coughs bravely into a handkerchief--a la Camille. In the second act, however, the cooperation changed to hostility, and even a superbly buffo fight could not rouse interest. A good period piece Sweeney Todd undeniably is, but who reads Henry Esmond for pleasure any more?