Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls

It seems like an age since we posted back in August last year (Are You Stage Ready?), asking for people to join our production and creative team, and pitching out for ideas for our first show. The response was overwhelming and has resulted in this, our first official show announcement, and a lot of changes to the way we are going to move forward – most notably that we will be running this production on a Profit Share – Open Book basis.

One of the people to get in touch was our wonderful new playwright Lucia Beretta and it didn’t take long for us to realise that we’d had a real meeting of minds.

The Sweeney Todd story has been on our shortlist for quite a while, although we were not so keen on C.G. Bond’s version from 1974 – too melodramatic. But when Lucia suggested we adapt the original story to create an historical play in a modern voice, we felt that the stars had aligned and the Theatre Gods had favoured our mortal efforts.

And so Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls – A Romantic Play of Peculiar Interest was born! Set in the vibrant and prosperous area around Fleet Street in the City of London in 1785, we will ask our audience to join us on a heart-thumping adventure of thwarted love, coercion, greed and wickedness that will get their blood pumping and senses reeling.

Those of you that follow our social media may have seen us teasing out some artwork, but we’ve been holding out with an official notice until we had a venue booked. This was a real learning curve for us and took a bit longer than expected, but as all good things come to those who wait, we are so happy to announce that we have the wonderful Chequer Mead Theatre booked for the week commencing Monday 23rd March 2026, with performances planned for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday Matinee and Evening.

We know it’s over a year away, but it was important for us to get the right venue; when we went to the show around last month we just fell in love with the stage and the technical facilities and saw our play coming to life. We cannot thank Nikki & all the staff at Chequer Mead enough for making us feel so welcome and helping make light of a rather daunting process.

We did a lot of umming and ahhing before going down the Profit Share – Open Book route, but we’re confident that this is the right course of action for this project and for Stage Ready as a company. This will give us the opportunity to put on a professional production in a commercial environment and by offering a share of the profits we hope to attract cast and crew who are professionally minded and have a vested interest in making the show a success.

We haven’t got all the details ironed out yet, but by Profit Share we envisage that, once the show has broken even, investors will get their money back plus a small percentage, then the remainder is divided amongst the cast and crew on a previously agreed points system based on the role(s) any particular person has played. By Open Book we mean that within the group of cast and crew, everyone will all be able to see the accounts and all will know the points system upfront.

It is one of our major tasks over the next couple of months to come up with a fair and transparent points system that everyone will be happy with. If you or anyone you know has experience in running or working in a Profit Share theatrical project we’d love to hear from you/them.

Will there be any profits? We believe so! We’re refining the budget on a daily basis, but we have a fairly low occupancy rate to break even, and that’s with a substantial marketing budget to get the message out and the audience in. We will be offering a number of innovative advertising and sponsorship opportunities to some local companies who would benefit from joining us on our journey and we are actively working on this already.

For all you actors out there, we’re asking for your patience as we are a bit of a way off from auditions. However we are hoping to have a launch party in mid May and we will be looking for a few volunteers for a script read-through in the next couple of months. At the bottom of this post you can see all the ways you can stay in the loop.

We are, however, looking to bring onboard a number of key creatives and crew and would love to hear from you if you feel like this is a project that excites you.

If any of the above interest you please get in touch – even if you cannot commit at the moment we’d still love to hear from you.