Gowrie Varma saw the Tim Burton-directed movie version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street with her father when she was 16. Their initial reactions, she says, were very different.

"He said, 'There was a lot of blood' and I said, 'I wish I could direct that - it would be awesome.' "

Now, at 24 and a final-year finance/laws student at the Australian National University, she's finally getting her wish. ANU Interhall Productions has teamed up with the ANU School of Music to produce the award-winning 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical. She's been heavily involved in theatre as both a director and actor during her degree, working a lot with National University Theatre Society, but this is her first time directing a musical.

"All of our actors are ANU students," Varma says.

"My music director, Katrina Tang, is a School of Music student and the School of Music has donated equipment, especially percussion equipment and a lot of the people in the orchestra are ANU students - not all of them from the School of Music."

Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is based on a 1973 play of the same name by Christopher Bond, itself adapted from a 19th-century melodrama based on a penny-dreadful serial, The String of Pearls.

Sweeney Todd (played by Spencer Cliff) is the alias of Benjamin Barker, a once-successful barber who has secretly returned to London after 15 years. He was transported to Australia for a crime he didn't commit through the machinations of the corrupt Judge Turpin (Colin Balog) and seeks to avenge the loss of his wife and his daughter Johanna (Amy Jenkins), who has become the judge's ward.

He resumes his work above the struggling pie shop of Mrs Lovett (Georgie Juszczyk), who becomes infatuated with him and when he is forced to murder a man who recognises him, Todd forms an unholy alliance with Lovett as a convenient means of disposing of the corpse - as it turns out, it will be the first of many as Sweeney's lust for blood takes hold. But Varma says while this is necessarily a violent show and there will be blood in her production, it won't be excessive: "The queasy are still welcome."

Varma says the Todd of the 1840s was driven by greed but in the musical, revenge has been added as a motivation to make him, if not necessarily entirely sympathetic, a bit more complex and human, since he's dealing with grief and loss. And Lovett, who recognises Sweeney and is attracted to him, though the feeling isn't mutual, has her own desires that he can help make happen.

"She's incredibly lonely, her husband's died, she has a failing shop, and she sees in him the life she's always dreamed of."

And the way their scheme plays out gives Sweeney Todd a darkly satirical underpinning as well as a thriller element.

Other characters in the musical include Beadle Bamford (Cameron Allan), the judge's right-hand man, Anthony (Will Collett), a sailor who falls in love with Johanna, the simpleton Tobias (Sachini Poogoda) and the mysterious Beggar Woman (Anna Rafferty).

Working with a cast of 23, Varma says she doesn't have a traditional anonymous chorus at all.

"In this show every chorus member has a character they play from start to finish."

She wanted to give all the actors, not just the principals, the opportunity to create and develop their roles throughout the show, working in a collaborative way as much as possible.

Cliff, 19, is a first-year languages/international relations student who began performing in shows in his hometown of Townsville at the age of 13. He saw Sweeney Todd at the age of 11 when his high school did it and the title character became one of his dream roles. He got in to the Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane and completed a year of musical theatre studies, but a serious back injury led to him pursuing another passion, his love for languages.

"And here we are."

The show, he says, is "a big sing, it requires a lot of stamina, but it's worth it".

He says of the vengeance-obsessed Sweeney Todd, "I kind of pity him in a way - it's not a nice emotion, not a nice thing to give somebody. You can paint him as a monster, killing all these people ... but he's doing it out of love. he's so caught in all the things that have been done to him by the judge and the beadle."