Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street synopsis

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Synopsis - Broadway musical

Simple Londoners are burying bag with the corpse, saying about the deceased Sweeney Todd, as of a demonic barber from Fleet Street. They remember terrible things of him. A ghost of barber appears and the story is transferred in the middle of the XIX century.

The young sailor arrives in London with a friend, whom he had rescued on the high seas. The friend’s name is Sweeney Todd. Seaman is glad to see native streets, but for Sweeney it is difficult to see the city where he once was happy. The situation is aggravated by beggar, offering services of a prostitute. They drive her away. Todd tells the tale of a ruined life of a certain barber, who had a wife and daughter, and then his family has been taken away. The judge on false charges exiled barber to Australia and owned his wife with cheating.

After parting with a sailor, Sweeney arrives at the Fleet Street in a small bakery. The hostess is pleased to see anyone – her establishment almost has no attendance, business is unprofitable. Sweeney offers her a joint business, if she would give him a room. A woman is surprised – all bypass her house: once there lived a barber, he was convicted on false charges, his wife was seduced by the judge, and she poisoned herself with arsenic from grief. Daughter Johanna became a student of the person who has arranged this mayhem. When he learned that his wife had died, Todd recognized to the hostess, that he is the same barber, and therefore wants revenge. Hostess agrees to this retribution.

To attract customers to his business, Sweeney is involved in street barbers competition and win it. Now many people, including a judge himself, wish to visit a first-class master. A Sweeney wants to handle with the judge and his assistants, braking down, ending their lives and hiding the bodies. Learning his plans, the owner conceives to use human flesh as the filling for her pies. So it would be possible to hide the crime and at the same time to rescue unprofitable bakery.

Johanna has grew up and turned into a beautiful girl. The judge planned to marry her. But her heart already belongs to someone else – she met a sailor who saved a hairdresser in the sea.

Finally, the judge comes to the barbershop and the Sweeney prepares to retribution. But his friend-sailor spoils his idea. He runs in and announces that he loves Johanna. Angry judge says that he’ll hide his ward, where no one would find her. And hastily leaves the barber shop without shaving. Todd says that from now on anyone who gets in his institution will be killed even if he did not deserve to die.

Business of bakery begins to flourish. Customers praise the meat pies, unaware of what they were prepared. Sweeney equipped his hairdresser's chair in a way, so that the body is delivered straight to the basement adjacent to the kitchen, for butchery. And there a hostess processes the flesh through a meat grinder, preparing pies. And only a beggar-prostitute say of diabolical smoke emanating from the institution, and the evil witch. But nobody listens to her.

The judge concludes his ward Johanna in the clinic, but an undercover sailor manages to infiltrate there and to rescue his beloved. They run away from the hospital and hid in a bakery on Fleet Street. Soon there comes the judge. In order to prevent beggar to interfere with her crazy speeches, Todd kills her. Only in the last minutes of his shaving, judge understands who the barber is, but it is too late for him.

While the hostess intends to burn the corpse of a beggar, Sweeney recognizes his wife in this ragamuffin: she managed to survive after the arsenic, but lost her mind completely. With grief, Todd throws in the oven the bakery owner and laments his wife. A sailor appears, only now realizing what kind of horrors were taking place here. He kills barber with his own razor, ending this bloody mess.
Last Update:July, 13th 2016

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