A barber who slashes throats in a geyser of blood. A woman who grinds the victims into meat pies. Doesn't it strike you as a little mad? Director John Doyle peered into the soul of "Sweeney Todd" and adjudged him worthy of a Victorian lockup for the insane. Let him tell his plasma-drenched tale of revenge there, finding his cast among the inmates.

Doyle has tidied up the rivers of gooey stage hemoglobin that flowed in Harold Prince's original phantasmagoria that won nearly every musical Tony award in 1979. And of course compared with the current film by Tim Burton, Doyle's piece is a veritable tea party, even as it takes on a sharper, fierce edge. Not so much a reaction to Prince's original, Doyle's production is a spare reconception with a chamber cast of 10 who are inmates in an asylum and listen as Sweeney Todd, played by David Hess, tells his story of revenge.

As they assume character roles, the actors also play their own musical instruments. If Brecht or "Marat/Sade" are popping to mind, you're getting the point. In sum, the touring production landing at the State Theatre in Minneapolis on Tuesday tells its story on radical new terms.

"It's apples and oranges," said actor Judy Kaye, who has checked herself into the lunatic manse for a go at playing the role of Mrs. Lovett on this tour. "I loved doing the big production; it is monumental in scope and that's pretty exciting. This one is kind of magical to me; it's like we're creating it every night out of whole cloth, and that's really fun to do."

This is Kaye's fifth hack at the role, which she describes as the second-favorite she's ever played. Each time, she said, she rediscovers a woman desperately in love -- "desperate being the operative word" -- who is at heart a pragmatist.

Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics for the original, pronounced himself impressed with this new version of "Todd." "Of all the productions I've seen, this is the one that comes closest to Grand Guignol, closest to what I originally wanted to do," he told Charles Isherwood of the New York Times. Sondheim said in the same article that he felt Doyle's production was "the most intense."

Kaye said she was originally wary of the challenge with the musical instruments. Now on tour, she downplays the gambit and says it's mostly for the sake of humor.

Of course, the question everyone wants to ask is whether she and her mates have had a look at Burton's film, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

"I saw it the first day it came out; we couldn't wait," she said. "Again, it's a whole other way to tell the story, and I had a great time."

Kaye hopes that interest in the film will fuel curiosity in the stage show.

"The film is so gory, and ours is so spare, so impressionistic so I think it will be really fun for audiences who are up for a musical thriller to see it done both ways."