Sweeney Todd

Hudson Scenic Studios engineered, fabricated, and automated Mimi Lien's Tony-nominated set for the 2023 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, turning an industrial cityscape into a fully mechanized playing space. At the center was a fully automated open-truss steel bridge spanning the width of the stage, engineered to independently rise, lower, and tilt, separating characters geographically in real time while housing the hidden body chute beneath the production's barber chair. A suspended jib crane, automated to rotate and track across the grid, delivered that chair with precision, then reconfigured mid-show to help transform the stage into Fogg's Asylum. Mrs. Lovett's oven was automated to telescope upward through Act 2, expanding from an ordinary kitchen fixture into a towering chimney reaching into the open truss above. All three systems - the bridge, the crane, and the chair mechanism - had to move in exact coordination, night after night. 

Hudson's scenic team also finished the bridge, crane, and oven as heavily marred wrought iron and extended that same industrial atmosphere across nearly 20,000 square feet of faux brick proscenium and portals, wrapping the entire stage in the aesthetic of Industrial Age London.