50 pages • 1-hour read
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
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Background
Cultural Context: Sweeney Todd’s Origins in the Penny Dreadful
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The characters of Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett, Tobias, and Johanna originated in the Victorian tradition of the penny dreadful. Penny dreadfuls were serialized stories with cheap prices that made them widely accessible throughout the United Kingdom during the 19th century. During the Industrial Revolution, the technology to produce literature at a mass scale was developed, driving literacy across all segments of the population, including the working class. The young men of the British working class were drawn to the sensational quality of penny dreadfuls, which often featured tales of crime, suspense, and horror. By the latter half of the century, hundreds of publishers sold over a million periodical titles every week. Apart from Todd, popular penny dreadful characters included Varney the Vampire and a fictional hero based on the historical highwayman Dick Turpin.
Sweeney Todd first appeared in a serial that ran from 1846 to 1847 entitled The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance, a story attributed to either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Peckett Prest. In the story, a woman named Johanna Oakley traces the disappearance of her lover to Todd, a barber on Fleet Street. She soon discovers that Todd has been killing his customers and bringing them to his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett, who uses their flesh to make meat pies. Johanna liberates her lover, whom Todd and Mrs. Lovett imprison, and subsequently exposes his captors, who are eventually killed.
There are some claims that the story of Sweeney Todd may be based on historical events that occurred in France. While there are no documents to suggest that a London barber named Sweeney Todd operated in the vicinity of Fleet Street during the Victorian era, the 17th-century journals of a Swedish traveler named Pehr Lindeström include an account that matches the story of Todd, though this account is set in Calais. Later on, the Parisian minister of police from 1799 to 1815, Joseph Fouché, recorded the criminal activity of a murderous barber who worked alongside a neighboring pastry cook to dispose of his victims’ corpses in the cook’s meat pies. Some suggest that the author of The String of Pearls read the republished account and used it as inspiration for the villain of his story.
Cultural Context: The Production History of Sweeney Todd
In 1970, British playwright Christopher Bond reinterpreted the tale of Sweeney Todd as a dramatic play entitled Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. American composer, lyricist, and dramatist Stephen Sondheim saw the play in 1973 and was immediately inspired to write a musical based on Bond’s reinterpretation. According to Sondheim, a key element of Bond’s take on the character was the human motivations he ascribed to Todd, elevating him from the one-dimensional villain that appeared in penny dreadfuls.
Sondheim shared the idea with frequent collaborator Harold Prince, who agreed to direct the musical when he saw how Sondheim’s vision further transformed the character into a critique of the Industrial Revolution. Though Sondheim disagreed with Prince on the social interpretation of the character, Prince’s interpretation greatly influenced the first production of Sweeney Todd, in which the stage resembled an era-accurate iron foundry. Sondheim enlisted British American novelist Hugh Wheeler to write the book for the musical, drawing on their previous experience working on Sondheim’s 1974 musical A Little Night Music, as well as Wheeler’s experience writing mystery fiction under the pen name Patrick Quentin.
The first production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opened at the Uris Theatre on Broadway in March 1979. It starred Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, both of whom won two of the musical’s eight inaugural Tony Awards that year. Prince, Wheeler, and Sondheim likewise won Tony Awards for their respective roles behind the scenes, and the play won Best Musical overall.
The show’s popularity drove other productions, which were likewise critically acclaimed. In 1980, the musical premiered on the West End, starring Denis Quilley and Sheila Hancock in the lead roles. This production ran for four months and won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. The show was revived for the first time on Broadway in 1989 and featured minimized creative direction in contrast to the maximalist original production. This production starred Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler and received a nomination for Best Revival of a Musical at the Tony Awards later that year.
Since then, revivals of Sweeney Todd frequently appear on the West End and Broadway. The most recent revival was in 2023, starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford in the lead roles. In 2007, the musical was adapted into a film by Tim Burton, who deployed his signature gothic style to Sondheim’s retelling of the story. Burton had been obsessed with Sondheim’s Todd character ever since he saw the musical in 1980, and the adaptation was a long-desired dream project. Burton cast his frequent collaborators Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter for the lead roles, as well as British actor Alan Rickman in the role of Judge Turpin. The film adaptation garnered wide critical acclaim, and some critics consider it one of the best musical films of the 21st century.
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