“It’s a sexy, dark comedy, right up the Halloween vein,” says Michael Rubinstein, one of the producers of Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare. “It’s a show about two serial killers, a murder trial with hookers involved, and it’s a musical with costumes in a Tim Burton vein.”

This is the first production by new company Theatre 20 and it’s ambitious. “Theatre 20 was founded when Canadian musical-theatre actors looked around at all the work that was not available. The bigger actors go to New York to do story-based musicals. Twenty actors — including Brent Carver, Colm Wilkinson and Louise Pitre — got together to found the company and, nothing against Mamma Mia, but what they wanted to create was in the Sondheim vein. Creating strong Canadian musicals, a step beyond the Fringe. We put out a call for pitches and couldn’t believe the amount of talented Canadian composers.”

After considering 51 pitches, the company settled on Bloodless, by Joseph Aragon. “It is Sondheim-esque,” Rubinstein says, “but it jumps off into all sorts of other stuff. Huge ballads and big Broadway numbers; one hooker has a ballad, ‘Searching,’ that out-ballads ‘I Dreamed a Dream.’” The tale revolves around two 1820s Scots, William Burke and William Hare, who ran a lodging house until they found that selling cadavers, even freshly burked corpses — yes, they became famous enough to have a type of murder named after them — for medical research was more profitable. “The student doctors are sleeping with hookers,” Rubinstein says, explaining how the horror spins off into farce. “Then one of the hookers winds up on the slab.”

If Bloodless has half as much energy as Rubinstein has enthusiasm it will nuke the Panasonic stage. “We’re terrified, but we’re excited,” he says. “There’s nothing I want to do beyond big musicals, and hopefully this is the beginning of a new musical theatre company.”

Bloodless runs Tues, Oct 9–Mon, Oct 28 at the Panasonic Theatre, 651 Yonge St. theatre20.com

Review by Jeremy Willard