^{Slideshow Above: The board of looks from Hartford Stage and TheaterWorks’ co-production of Sweeney Todd; costume designer Fabian Aguilar’s sketch of Johanna as a boy; the show’s human cast are dressed to kill.}

One of the most acclaimed and epically scaled musicals ever, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is an appropriately large-scale show for Hartford Stage and Theaterworks’ first joint production. 

Here The HAPs’ associate editor Alex Dueben speaks with two of the players essential to making it happen: scenic designer Luke Cantarella and costume designer Fabian Aguilar, who share about their processes, working with the space they’re given, and how characters come down to lines – but not the ones they say.

Alex Dueben: To the degree that there is a typical process, how do you like to work?

Fabian Aguilar: So much of the conversations about set design happen before costumer designers’ conversations with the director. The vessel for the world starts being constructed earlier than the costume world. Early on, Luke and I didn’t have much collaboration, but I was constantly referring to [his work]. But even then, Luke reached out: “What color was this outfit going to be?” Because he was looking at sofas.

Luke Cantarella: Sweeney Todd can be more literal; it can be more abstract. It’s been done in super pared down ways, like in the John Doyle production, and there’s been too many, in my opinion, “steampunk-y” Sweeney Todds. [But] when it was first done, the show had this blend of grand guignol, 19th century music hall, Broadway of that era, and the spareness of 70s theater that the play adaptation comes from. I feel like the camp part of it has really taken over. We were thinking: How do we keep some of the spirit of that, but let it get into something that felt on the edges of camp, or on the edges of overly designed? 

AD: Yes, there are so many ways to approach Sweeney Todd. Your choices do shape the tone, the mood, the approach, for the actors but also for the audience.

FA: From the beginning [director] Rob [Ruggiero] and I were adamant about not being slaves to history. We are storytellers, not historians, but when your brain looks at a different time period, it has to shift. You are already starting to receive that message just by seeing clothing that you don’t get at H&M or Walmart. You’re letting the actors use the design tool that you’ve given them to be comfortable on stage. We were constantly making sure that we were feeling truthful to clothing but not losing the characters; not being campy but still being fun; bringing color but making sure we weren’t losing the grit of the story. 

LC: Rob is a really good colorist. Most directors that I work with– I don’t know how it is with you, Fabian– have a sense of color, and they’ll respond to what I’m showing them. Like, that feels like the right world that we’re in. Rob is more involved. I’ve learned to think, “I have an amazing assistant.” [laughs] That took a while to get used to, because normally as a designer you think, “This is my thing,” but he’s got an amazing eye for color. Nine times out of ten I’m like, “You’re right: We do need a little more warmth in that…” That’s unique in my experience.

FA: There was one point when I wasn’t able to be in New York City fabric shopping, but Rob was there for auditions, and he went into the fabric stores but had me on FaceTime. He walked in talking to the vendors like, “I’m on the phone with the designer, I’m his assistant.’

[both laugh]

AD: Fabian, how are you thinking about these operatic, almost archetypal characters, and finding the right shape and color?

FA: We are starting with the silhouette of 1840s. Women’s wear is always much more iconic than men’s in terms of silhouette. Johanna’s dress went through many iterations. Do we put her in a light muslin gown? What is that soft silhouette going to do to that character, versus a heavier silk? We were going to go with a soft and delicate, a doll version of Johanna that this judge has preserved over time, but after looking at [Lauren Maria Medina’s] audition tapes, Rob and I felt that she brings a stronger force to Joanna than you would think as the typical ingenue. We wanted to honor that in the dress. 

Instead of the dress feeling like we’re trying to make her look like this youthful doll, he’s bringing her into the womanhood. If he bought a dress to prepare her for womanhood, that silhouette is so much more different. It’s very form fitting. It’s not about bows and ribbons and ruffles, and really about seeing the female form – as much as you can in corsets and petticoats. 

FA, cont.: With the men too. When you see Todd, it’s not about trying to make him look scary or menacing, but seeing a working man that has been pulled out of the ocean, literally, and is trying to enter back into life the best that he can; versus Toby, whose silhouette is more about what has he been given. He’s been provided for by his boss, Pirelli. Again, in the silhouette, you see how fine the fabrics and materials are…

Versus the judge, who will be in much more stark or strong clean lines of power. That’s how I think of the silhouettes and seeing their characters.

AD: Luke, you’ve done a lot of shows with Rob at TheatreWorks. Hartford Stage is a very different kind of setup. How has the space shaped your thinking?

LC: The space is almost always where I start. Fabian has the actors; I have the space. You never want to fight the space. You always want to kind of lean into it. When you walk into Hartford Stage, you feel like it’s got volume, but it’s not that tall. We do have audience in the center, but we were insistent on [making] sure the set continues out around into the house. We really try to find the language that makes the space work on its own terms.

AD: Fabian, how are you thinking about the space and designing into it? How much does the theater itself influence your designs?

FA: If I’m at a new theatre where I’ve never designed, I try to see a production there to have the audience experience. We are designing for the audience. I’m trying to be conscious of [what] you won’t be able to see from the back of the house. If I’m looking at a fabric that I really like, maybe the scale is too big for the size of the theater. Or the scale is too small for the size of the theatre. That’s always considered.

Going back to the silhouettes and proportions of how it’s going to be seen from stage: Knowing that we’ve got audience in the middle and people are going around, we can trust that there’s going to be much more access to the details in the clothes, so it’s worthwhile to spend the time on that detail. It’s nice to be able to see the specificity and the distressing. So much of storytelling can happen on clothes.

Sweeney Todd at HartfordStage opens June 12 and runs through July 5, 2026. Open captioned is June 21 at 2pm. See their website for more special showings.