50 Fun Facts About Sweeney Todd

Which future rock star fronted the Canadian glam band Sweeney Todd as a teenager before launching a solo career?

Bryan Adams replaced original singer Nick Gilder in the Vancouver band, whose hit Roxy Roller had topped the Canadian chart. He left within a year, after one unsuccessful album.

Which actress, later a famous television sleuth, created the role of Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd on Broadway in 1979?

Angela Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for the part and stayed with it for 14 months. Murder, She Wrote made her a worldwide star five years later.

Fleet Street, the London home of Sweeney Todd's barber shop, later became shorthand for which British industry?

Newspapers made the street's name: London's first daily, the Daily Courant, was published there in 1702, and by the 20th century most national titles had offices on it.

Which Pirates of the Caribbean star took singing lessons to play the title role in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd?

Johnny Depp was not known as a singer, and the film's producer called casting him a gamble. It brought him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

In the musical Sweeney Todd, to which distant land was the barber transported on a false charge before his escape?

Australia is where the barber spends fifteen years as a convict. That wronged-man backstory was added by the stage play the musical is based on; earlier versions gave him no such sympathetic motive.

Which pop-classical singer returned to Broadway in 2023 to play the title role in a revival of Sweeney Todd?

Josh Groban earned a Tony nomination for the part. The revival began with a workshop held just three days after the show's composer died in 2021.

Sweeney Todd first appeared in 1846 in which kind of cheap, lurid Victorian serial sold in weekly parts?

Penny dreadfuls cost a penny for each weekly part of 8 to 16 pages. Boys who could not afford one often formed clubs to share the cost and passed the flimsy booklets from reader to reader.

Which Broadway composer and lyricist wrote both Sweeney Todd and the fairy-tale musical Into the Woods?

Stephen Sondheim saw a play about the barber in London in 1973 and pictured a small horror piece. It became his fourth show to win the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Which Stranger Things actor played Mrs. Lovett's young pie-shop helper in the 2023 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd?

Gaten Matarazzo was a Broadway child actor, playing Gavroche in Les Misérables, before finding fame as Dustin Henderson. He left the revival in November 2023.

Which Victorian novelist joked about pies filled with cat meat a decade before Sweeney Todd first appeared in print?

Charles Dickens gave the joke to Sam Weller in The Pickwick Papers. In Martin Chuzzlewit, two years before the barber's debut, a character frets that a friend will think he has been made into meat pies.

Which director cast his then partner Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett in the 2007 film of Sweeney Todd?

Tim Burton insisted the film be bloody, feeling that stage versions which held back lost their power. On set the fake blood was coloured orange so it would look right on the desaturated film.

What is the surname of the corrupt judge who transports Sweeney Todd and raises the barber's daughter as his ward?

Turpin shares his name with the highwayman Dick Turpin, another favourite of cheap Victorian fiction. In the musical the judge decides to marry the ward he has raised.

Which Harry Potter actor played the corrupt judge who destroys the barber's family in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd?

Alan Rickman, the films' Severus Snape, was joined by two more Harry Potter co-stars: Helena Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall, who plays the judge's henchman, the Beadle.

Under which real name did Sweeney Todd work as a London barber before a judge had him transported?

Benjamin Barker was the former tenant of the room above Mrs. Lovett's pie shop, and she promises to keep the returning stranger's secret.

What is the profession of Anthony Hope, who rescues Sweeney Todd at sea and befriends him on the way to London?

A sailor newly docked in London, he falls for a girl he sees singing at a window, unaware that she is his new friend's daughter.

What is the name of Sweeney Todd's daughter, raised as the judge's ward and loved by Anthony Hope?

Johanna shares her name with the heroine of the Victorian original, who is no relation to the barber and disguises herself as a boy to work in his shop.

Which comedian famous for prank-interview characters played the flamboyant rival barber in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd?

Sacha Baron Cohen was cast in October 2006. He sang on screen again five years later as the innkeeper Thénardier in the film of Les Misérables.

Where does Mrs. Lovett meet her death once Sweeney Todd learns she lied to him about his wife?

She perishes in her own oven after the barber pretends to forgive her and dances her wildly round the bakehouse. In the Victorian original he poisons her instead.

Which character finally kills Sweeney Todd in the bakehouse at the end of the musical?

Tobias Ragg, driven mad and with his hair turned white, crawls up from the sewer and cuts the barber's throat with the barber's own blade.

In which guise has Sweeney Todd's wife Lucy been living on the streets of London, unrecognised by her husband?

A beggar woman who drifts through the story turns out to be Lucy, left insane by the poison she took. The barber kills her in haste and sees her face clearly only afterwards.

The Uris Theatre, where Sweeney Todd opened in 1979, now carries which name as the long-time Broadway home of Wicked?

The Gershwin became its name in 1983, in honour of two songwriting brothers. The original Sweeney Todd played 557 performances there before closing in June 1980.

Which actress, later Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, won an Olivier Award as Mrs. Lovett in London's West End?

Imelda Staunton starred opposite Michael Ball in a staging that moved the story from 1846 to the 1930s. Both of them won Oliviers, and so did the production.

Which comic duet closes Act I of Sweeney Todd as Mrs. Lovett proposes baking the barber's victims into pies?

A Little Priest was deliberately paired with the barber's most nightmarish solo, which comes just before it. In the play the musical is based on, the whole scheme took less than half a page of dialogue.

Which Oscar-winning actress made her New York stage debut as Mrs. Lovett in a 2014 concert staging of Sweeney Todd?

Emma Thompson had not acted on stage for 24 years when she joined the New York Philharmonic concerts, singing opposite the opera star Bryn Terfel. PBS later broadcast the performance.

The showman barber in Sweeney Todd who is really former assistant Daniel O'Higgins poses as a native of which country?

Italy is the claimed homeland of 'Adolfo Pirelli', who sells a sham cure for hair loss in the market. He drops the accent in private to blackmail the barber, and becomes the first victim.

In Cockney rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd stands for which London police unit, giving a 1970s TV drama its title?

The Flying Squad became 'the Sweeney' to Londoners, and the nickname passed to the television series starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman.

Which fantasy author portrayed Sweeney Todd as a barber traumatised by the Napoleonic Wars in the 2012 novel Dodger?

Terry Pratchett made the barber a tragic figure rather than a villain, and has the young hero Dodger bring about his arrest.

In the Sweeney Todd song My Friends, which long-lost possessions does the barber greet as trusted companions?

His silver razors are handed back to him by Mrs. Lovett, and holding them again persuades him to take up his old trade.

Where does the judge lock away Sweeney Todd's daughter after learning that she plans to elope with Anthony Hope?

An asylum run by the corrupt Jonas Fogg becomes her prison. Anthony Hope gets inside by posing as a wigmaker who wants to buy the inmates' hair.

Which poison does Mrs. Lovett say Sweeney Todd's wife Lucy swallowed after her husband was sent away?

Arsenic is what Lucy took, but Mrs. Lovett leaves out one fact: the dose left her insane rather than dead. The barber learns the truth only in the final scene.

Which star played the tuba as Mrs. Lovett in the 2005 Sweeney Todd revival whose actors were also the orchestra?

Patti LuPone also played orchestra bells in the ten-actor staging, which brought her a Tony nomination. Five years earlier she had sung the role in concert with the New York Philharmonic.

Which future sitcom star sang the role of Mrs. Lovett's young helper in the 2001 Sweeney Todd concert filmed for PBS?

Neil Patrick Harris had already sung the part in Los Angeles in 1999 and in New York in 2000. The San Francisco broadcast won an Emmy for classical music programming.

Which Canadian actor, later Blue Bloods patriarch Henry Reagan, won a Tony as Broadway's first Sweeney Todd in 1979?

Len Cariou was the composer's personal choice for the barber. Asked what vocal range the part would need, he offered a couple of octaves and was told that would be more than sufficient.

Which director staged Broadway's original Sweeney Todd and later won a Tony for The Phantom of the Opera?

Hal Prince first dismissed the story as a simple melodrama. He came round once he saw it as a portrait of the Industrial Revolution, a reading its composer never shared.

Which duet do Sweeney Todd and the judge sing together as the barber prepares to cut his enemy's throat?

Pretty Women lulls the judge in the chair until Anthony Hope bursts in and blurts out his plan to elope. The judge storms off, and the barber's rage turns on the whole city.

Which ballad does the pie-shop boy sing to Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd after growing suspicious of the barber?

Not While I'm Around is the boy's promise to protect her. Soon afterwards he recognises a murdered man's purse in Mrs. Lovett's hands, and she locks him in the bakehouse.

Which film composer, best known for Psycho, wrote the thriller score that inspired the music of Sweeney Todd?

Bernard Herrmann wrote it for Hangover Square (1945), a film about a composer who kills during blackouts in Edwardian London. The creator of Sweeney Todd called his own score an homage.

The 2007 film Sweeney Todd won only one of its three Oscar nominations, taking the Academy Award in which category?

Best Art Direction went to the team led by designer Dante Ferretti, who built a darker, more sinister Fleet Street. The other two nominations were for the leading man and the costumes.

Which Oscar-winning actor played the barber opposite Joanna Lumley in the 1997 TV film The Tale of Sweeney Todd?

Ben Kingsley earned a Screen Actors Guild nomination for the role. The film was directed by John Schlesinger, who made Midnight Cowboy.

Under which title did the Victorian serial that first featured Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett appear in 1846?

The String of Pearls is named for a necklace that a customer is carrying to his missing friend's sweetheart when he vanishes inside the barber's shop.

The towering set of Broadway's original Sweeney Todd in 1979 was built from which kind of old industrial building?

An iron foundry from Rhode Island was taken apart and reassembled on the stage. One critic called the result part cathedral, part factory, part prison.

Which playwright's stage play first gave Sweeney Todd a wronged-man backstory and became the basis of the musical?

Christopher Bond wrote some of his characters in blank verse and borrowed from Jacobean tragedy. His play reached the Theatre Royal Stratford East, where the future musical's composer saw it.

Which writer won a Tony for the book of Sweeney Todd, five years after winning one for the revival of Candide?

Hugh Wheeler was a London-born novelist who had written many mysteries under pen names such as Jonathan Stagge before he turned to musicals.

Which medieval chant from the Mass for the dead is quoted in the opening ballad of Sweeney Todd?

Dies irae is the Requiem sequence famously set by Mozart and Verdi. In Sweeney Todd the old plainchant comes back in fast and slow versions with each return of the ballad.

Which British melodrama star played Sweeney Todd some 2,000 times on stage and in a 1936 film version?

Tod Slaughter was born with that surname. Nicknamed Mr. Murder, he revived Victorian blood-and-thunder melodramas on stage and has been called Britain's first horror film star.

Which actor took over the title role of Sweeney Todd on Broadway in 1980 and won an Emmy for the televised production?

George Hearn was still playing the barber twenty years later, stepping in at the last minute for the New York Philharmonic's concert staging in 2000.

Which instrument does Mrs. Lovett play loudly to drown out the Beadle's screams as Sweeney Todd kills him upstairs?

Harmonium music fills the scene twice: the Beadle, sent to look into the stench from her chimney, first sits singing at it until the barber comes home to give him his promised free shave.

In the original 1846 serial, what finally happens to Sweeney Todd once his crimes are exposed?

He is hanged after his victims' remains are found in the crypt of the church beside his shop. An expanded 1850 edition changed the ending: he escapes prison and is finally shot.

Which classic revenge novel lent plot elements to the stage play on which the musical Sweeney Todd is based?

The Count of Monte Cristo also follows a man jailed on a false charge who comes home under a new name to punish the men who wronged him.

Which historic West End theatre staged the first London production of Sweeney Todd in 1980, starring Denis Quilley?

Drury Lane kept the show for only 157 performances. Despite mixed reviews, that London run still won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical.