Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape, death by suicide, and animal death.

Before the play begins, an organist plays funeral music while two gravediggers dig a grave onstage. A police warden hurries them up. Two other men come to pull the stage drop to a factory whistle.

Members of the company sing that Sweeney Todd, the ghostly “Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” killed his clients, many of whom were well-off and had a good reputation, while shaving them (“The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”). Together, the company calls on Todd to “swing [his] razor wide” and “hold it to the skies” (2), spilling the blood of his moralist customers. At this point, two men dump a body bag into the grave. A woman follows them and pours a flour tin full of black ashes into the grave.

Sections of the company go on to describe Todd and his legend. Todd kept a neat and simple parlor, which bolstered his inconspicuous manner. He acted according to secret music that only he could hear, driving him to move and scheme in ways that made him seem terrifying even to rats. At this point, the actor playing Todd rises out of the grave in the center stage, leading the company to sing his ballad.