HOW do you solve a moral dilemma like Sweeney Todd?

The ambiguity of a story in which a great injustice is committed against the same man who subsequently embarks on a killing spree has challenged people ever since it appeared in Victorian “penny dreadful” literature in the mid-19th century.

“I think now an audience is looking for their moral structure to be challenged a little bit,” says Conor Baum, the director of a new adaptation currently running at 88 London Road. “You are constantly pushed from pillar to post as to whether Sweeney’s actions are correct.”

Baum reckons that “we are past a religiously indoctrinated sense of black and white, of wrong and right”. He adds: “More people identify as secular now and perhaps there is a sense that morality is more subjective now that it once was.”

On one hand, we should sympathise greatly with Todd. Under the name of Benjamin Barker, he is happily married to Lucy, with a child. Then the evil Judge Turpin intervenes and Barker’s life crumbles. He is sent to prison despite being innocent and Turpin takes Lucy for himself. Upon his release from prison, Todd is informed that Lucy committed suicide after being raped by Turpin.

There is a certain point in the story, however, when Todd’s desire to avenge Lucy by murdering Turpin morphs into a more universal, all-encompassing rage. He begins to slaughter everybody who enters his barber’s salon.

“There’s a moment toward the end of act one, called Epiphany, when Sweeney realises that his rage against the system is devoid of a single motivation,” says Baum, who assumed the director role when his friend Nathan Potter was taken ill. “The lyric in the song is ‘we all deserve to die…even I’.”

The so-called Demon Barber of Fleet Street has appeared in various incarnations since its roots in Victorian London. A young gener- ation will probably know the character from Tim Burton’s 2007 take on the warped tale with Johnny Depp.

The 88 London Road production is based on the 1979 Steven Sondheim musical. A central theme Baum wanted to bring to the fore was “the very human fascination with other people’s misery and the gore of crime”.

He adds: “It strikes me as something that is very important in our media-driven era, where we have a lot of access to what Mrs Lovett calls ‘morbid fancies’.” This isn’t the only social resonance Baum sees in the tale – he reads Mrs Lovett, Todd’s sidekick who bakes his victims into her pies, as an allegory for capitalism.

“She thinks, ‘if we are going to kill all these people, why not make some money from it at the same time?’.” While Todd uses a commercial outlet as a front for his murderous activity, Mrs Lovett recycles the produce back out into the market. Savvy, in a way.

So, when all is said and done, does the audience sympathise with Todd?

“There is something innately human in being able to right a wrong,” ponders Baum.

“When you have an argument, you think afterwards about all the things you could have done that would have swung things in your favour. Sweeney Todd is a kind of manifestation of that.

“So perhaps we empathise rather than sympathise with him, in that sense.”

Sweeney Todd 88 London Road, Brighton, until Saturday, October 29 7.30pm (2pm matinee on Sat and Sun), £20, 01273 911313