I do miss the blood.

I’m surprised, too. But there’s not enough juice – carnal or emotional – in the current, goth-ish production of Sweeney Todd at Circle Theatre. Not enough, that is, to make this great musical roar or sing the way it should. Director Joel Ferrell’s revival aims for a fresh re-imagining, a welcome target: Put away the Victoriana and update a few things to our new Gilded Age, to our own homelessness, grinding workloads and our current abuses of wealth and power.

But, thanks to Sarah Gay – who is so stand-out forceful in her role as Sweeney’s partner, Mrs. Lovett – this show is practically The Tragedy of A Lady Pie Shop Owner instead of The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It’s hardly Gay’s fault; everything else is mostly ingenious or underplayed — not cut-your-throat compelling.

When Stephen Sondheim set out to adapt a 19th-century, violence-and-vengeance penny dreadful about a convicted barber bent on payback, the composer said he had no grander aim than to create a lurid musical that would deliver some chills. Yet that modest aim led to one of the landmark achievements of Sweeney, arguably Sondheim’s masterwork. It was the first musical — to my mind, the only one — that is frightening, truly appalling, yet is also funny and musically resplendent.

This is hardly what you might expect from a typical evening of Broadway entertainment — it certainly wasn’t in 1979. It’s been said that in Don Giovanni, Mozart expanded our musical vocabulary by using music, for the first time, to express fear. It comes in that moment when the Don is dragged down to hell.

Ditto Sweeney. This is not the gotcha! fear of Hollywood slasher films, though Sondheim certainly provides occasions for arterial effects. It’s the rampaging worldview here that’s so rabidly grim: We don’t need to be dragged anywhere; we’re already in hell.

The core of this bleak cosmology lies in the title character’s realization that human existence is simple and brutal: “We all deserve to die!” Sweeney (Max Hartman) sings in a number appropriately titled ‘Epiphany.’ “Because in all of the whole human race / Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two / There’s the one staying put in his proper place / And the one with his foot in the other one’s face./ Look at me, Mrs. Lovett, look at you.”

Let me add up our profits so far: Mary Gilbreath Grim, Max Hartman and Sarah Gay in Circle Theatre’s ‘Sweeney Todd.’ All photos by TayStan Photography.

But the desolation of spirit is even more inclusive here, more nihilistic. Sondheim crafted one of his most crystalline songs, ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird,’ for Sweeney’s daughter, Joanna. She was taken from Sweeney when he was transported to Australia as his prison sentence, and the lecherous Judge Turpin kept locked away as his ward. Trapped in his house, Joanna sings about the caged birds being sold on the street. Immediately after the song, the street vendor himself is asked, why do the birds sing?

Oh, he replies. We blinds ’em.

That detail, the casual cruelty of it — blinding birds to entertain us — is the singing universe of this musical in miniature. Nothing escapes exploitation or pain and death — whether it deserves it or not.

Knee-deep in death and exploitation, Mrs. Lovett, the shopkeeper, is eminently practical: If Sweeney’s going to slit people’s throats, why not use his murdered clients to generate some revenue? Sell a few meat pies? In this view, Sweeney’s revenge and her own shop extend the entire, squalid, Industrial Revolution that’s taken over Victorian London and is driving people to their deaths a little more slowly than Sweeney.

It’s a take on Sweeney Todd that’s colored productions and revivals ever since. Except — the truth is that Hugh Wheeler’s script and Sondheim’s lyrics never mention any factories or exploited laborers. There’s not a scrap of steam-powered machinery onstage nor any villainous banker. The entire Industrial Revolution setting was supplied by Hal Prince, the show’s original Broadway producer, and his genius scene designer Eugene Lee (the former house designer for the Dallas Theater Center and Saturday Night Live).

They did it in epic fashion: Lee dragged in the brick-and-steel remains of an old New England foundry for his immersive set. A piercing, factory steam whistle even punctuated the scene changes. Voila: We have Charles Dickens and Karl Marx and their dark, Satanic mills — all crowded in Mrs. Lovett’s basement, making humans into food. The show gained broader historical context and economic analysis; it was about more than just a nutjob with a blade. We see the wider, heartless, socioeconomic system.

The set won Lee his second Tony Award.

Mary Gilbreath Grim as the mad beggar woman in Circle’s ‘Sweeney Todd.’

In his program note, director Ferrell subscribes to this basic interpretation. No problem with that — how far has the minimum wage advanced many of us these days? But what’s actually most inventive and promising here is Ferrell’s attempt at a new take on Sweeney — with contemporary steampunk-ish styles.

Gone are the Victorian costumes, except for the occasional flourish like a recycled hat or vest. And set designer Bob Lavallee has taken advantage of Circle’s underground location to remind us theatergoers that we are, indeed, trapped in a dark basement. He’s fashioned a subterranean, apocalyptic wasteland-or-other. It’s not quite a sewer or a subway service tunnel, just a leftover industrial place where steel beams are lying about with the ratty plastic curtains of a meat freezer. He’s even devised a wheeled wooden platform that elevates the performers so their heads are practically brushing the ceiling — emphasizing this claustrophobic, no-exit netherworld.

The casting arrangement at Circle Theatre draws its inspiration from the minimalist Broadway revival of Sweeney in 2005, which was dubbed Teeny Todd. Director John Doyle reduced the original cast from more than two dozen to eleven and did away entirely with a pit orchestra. All of the actors performed musical instruments onstage. It was a ‘chamber musical,’ a daring choice because Sondheim’s near-constant underscoring is one of the things that elevates Sweeney from the melodramatic to the operatic.

At Circle, there are only eight actors, yet we occasionally hear them perform on a trombone, a French horn, a guitar, some percussion but mostly (and somewhat monotously) a piano (played by Aimee Hurst Bozart, who’s never actually seen). This impromptu band onstage adds to the welcome, inventively rough-edged, Poverty-Row feel of the show.

But it also produces a thin texture for the music, one much more dependent on individual singers. Music director Ian Ferguson is the young sailor and love interest, Anthony. And he delivers his number ‘Joanna’ like an emo singer — just a lone guitar and his strained voice, expressing his ardent love for Sweeney’s daughter.

As strikingly cluttered as all the trash and musical instruments may be, there are some peculiar inconsistencies. The mad beggar woman, for instance, played by Mary Gilbreath Grim, is dressed in torn plastic trash bags (the costumes are by Melissa Panzarello). But any sense of squalor is belied by her trim, David Bowie-meets-Annie-Lennox haircut. And all her trash bags are actually quite clean, not filthy at all. So her get-up is more a slumming, punkish fashion choice and less a product of real homelessness. (Meanwhile, the judge’s and Sweeney’s outfits are certainly grubby enough.)

Music director Ian Ferguson as Anthony Hope, the young sailor in love with Sweeney’s daughter Joanna.

These kinds of details pull us out of Sweeney‘s pitch-black universe: Where are we, exactly? And who are these people? We might wonder, for example, why Sweeney and Anthony repeatedly extol Joanna’s beautiful yellow tresses — when Carly Wheeler, who plays her, is obviously a brunette. Why? Why Sweeney’s use of ordinary butter knives instead of his customary straight razor? In his shaving contest with the snake-oil salesman Adolfo Pirelli (also played by Mary Gilbreath Grim), Hartman’s Sweeney certainly strops his blade as if it were a razor.

Are we to see this Sweeney as a kind of impromptu vaudeville created by homeless characters with whatever trash they have at hand? Whatever the case, Ferrell self-consciously avoids many of the show’s long-established staging techniques, choosing new expressions, new tools. Great. But it’d help if those choices didn’t often flatten or fudge the show’s emotional payoffs. When Mrs. Lovett presents Sweeney with his prized, sterling silver razor set — which she’s kept all the years he was away, serving his sentence in Australia — the Sweeney in past productions has grasped his razor, exultantly thrust his arm upwards as if defying God himself. “At last,” he shouts, “my right arm is complete!”

It’s our first, terrifying indication that Sweeney is more deranged than simply a wronged man seeking justice. Vengeance has consumed him like a fever; it defines him. But at this moment, Max Hartman acts more or less as though he’s — well, satisfied. Thanks. Got my razor back. Appreciate it.

Hartman would seem to be a superb choice for Sweeney. He has the heft, the physical presence, the emotional force and the musical and acting chops the character needs. Yet Hartman seems oddly opaque, even reserved or withdrawn as he soft-pedals both the barber’s humor and his murderousness. Conclusion: This is the approach Ferrell wants.

And so, we come back to the lack of bloodshed.

Don’t take too much off the top. Max Hartman and Randy Pearlman in Circle Theatre’s ‘Sweeney Todd.’

Admittedly, in the past, some directors have gone overboard with the Grand Guignol-ish splatter and spurt. And it’s a bold move by Ferrell to abstain from all carnage during the show. But this lack of shock value leaves Randy Pearlman (who plays Judge Turpin as well as a string of Sweeney’s nameless victims) to squirm as he dies over and over again, making unconvincing and clownish contortions.

This throat-cutting scene — with the same lovely song, ‘Joanna,’ that Anthony delivers — is one of those moments unique to Sweeney. It’s an emotional mix that no previous show had ever attempted. The music is gorgeous and yearning: In a duet, Sweeney and Anthony both long for Joanna. But in Sweeney’s case, he’s resigned himself to never seeing his beloved daughter again, so he’s robotically going about murdering anyone, everyone. Without Joanna, without the possibility of anyrevenge against Turpin, life has no meaning. So why should any of them live?

At the same time, his methodical slaughters are actually comic. He’s like a glum waiter just going through the motions of serving customers, shoving food at them. Except he’s systematically poisoning them all.

That fusion of comedy, horror, beauty and pathos can be stunning and hilarious. But without the horror, it’s off-kilter. It’s not as funny, despite Pearlman’s flailings, and it’s not particularly heartbreaking, despite Hartman’s melancholy. I was actually surprised to see how bloodshed is so necessary for that scene to kick us in the face. The gruesomeness fuels it, feeds it, makes it uniquely funny and anguished.

Uniquely Sweeney.

In wonderfully sharp contrast, Sarah Gay’s Mrs. Lovett manages to hit all these different notes of comedy and pathos and horror with seeming ease. She’s all-in with Nellie Lovett’s particular brand of dementia. Gay’s cracked voice, her rubbery energy, her comic, unrequited passion for Sweeney: She’s like a murderous Olive Oyl, ready for anything. She’s such a vivid character, you half-expect her to give up on Hartman’s low-energy, manic-depressive barber. Why stick with this mope? Just kill him and go into business for herself.

As a director, Ferrell has done some of his best work with monsters and musical hells: Frankenstein, Cabaret, reasons to be pretty, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And one scene here does give us a taste of the impact his approach to Sweeney Todd might have delivered. The original Broadway production cut the musical number, ‘Mea Culpa’ sung by Judge Turpin. In it, Turpin whips himself into a sadomasochistic frenzy over his ward Joanna. He resolves to marry her despite — because of? — her hatred of him.

Subsequent revivals have re-introduced the nasty little number. The judge, alone in his study, punishes himself like a penitent wallowing in self-loathing. But here, it’s a public scene: Ferrell has Randy Pearlman stand in a spotlight like a guilty man in the docket while the rest of the cast, in unison, slaps the stage with belts. With each thunderous thwack, Pearlman jolts like he’s been electrocuted — or having an orgasm. The effect is sordid, creepy — and galvanizing.

So OK. I’ll admit it: No blood can sometimes equal truly fresh blood.