Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Sweeney is a barber, right? Why don't we ever see him, you know, cutting hair? Or pulling teeth or doing the sorts of things that Victorian barbers tended to do? Surely he gives out more than shaves.
    • Shaving is probably easier to stage than a haircut or tooth extraction.
    • Play version the contest in the beginning is best two out of three. The events were shaving and pulling a molar. Sweeney won both.
    • Probably conservation of detail. Shaving's important to the story in that it's his MO. Haircuts and dentistry, on the other hand, are not.
      • Precisely. We don't see him eat, sleep or go to the toilet either, but he must do all three.
      • Also note that Sweeney doesn't kill every customer who sits in his chair, just those whose disappearance will not cause a great deal of stir.
        • Men need to shave a lot more often than they need a haircut or a tooth pulled.
    • If this troper is allowed to refer to the movie of the musical for a minute, why on earth was Sweeney so worried about Judge Turpin seeing the blood on his sleeve after killing Pirelli when barbers did surgery and blood-letting? Couldn't he just say that he'd been doing some rather messy surgery?
      • Turpin would've had him hanged for... something worth hanging him for.
      • Because the average moviegoer wouldn't know that little detail about Victorian barbers?
      • I may be wrong, but I thought Barbers became known mostly for their appearance caretaking than medical work by the time the musical takes place. Doctor barbers were mostly from the 1700s and earlier.
        • Also, remember, that Turpin is already suspicous of Sweeney. It probably only his panic and Sweeney appearing to be doing a Heel Face Turn that got him into the chair. Turpin might have waited, but would have been hesitant to sit down upon seeing the blood.
  • Why does Sweeney Todd kill so many people at once? Mrs. Lovett would be so backlogged the bodies would begin to rot.
    • There IS some passage of time during the song--I would say a week or two. Anthony couldn't have found Johanna and become a wig-maker's apprentice in a couple of hours, after all. Note (in the film) the differences in Johanna's appearance from when Anthony first finds her (still pretty and unrestrained) and when he busts her out of the asylum (lack of grooming, straitjacket, and jumpy from being cooped up with insane people).
      • Further, in the stage show, Johanna has a line in "City on Fire" making it clear that she's been in Fogg's Asylum for a while: "You said you'd marry me Monday, that's what you promised.../That was last August..."
  • How was Todd able to kill people as long as he did? His victims weren't nobodies; they were well known in their communities. Didn't anyone ever investigate and find out that their last known action was going to the barber on Fleet Street?
    • Todd basically makes sure to kill foreigners and other folks who weren't well known around London, and those who didn't have families. His first few victims are a traveling salesman and then several men that we can assume fit the descriptions above. It's only on the last day of his life he kills anyone well known in the city: the Beadle and Turpin
  • Does anyone actually, truly believe that Todd would have been happy knowing Lucy was still alive, given her present condition? I mean, she was 1) crazy, 2 ) having sex with anybody who'd give her money (and you can't possibly believe that every single donor was self-respecting enough to turn her advances down like Todd and Anthony did), and 3) not the gorgeous young trophy wife he married. I think Mrs. Lovett really did do him a favor, it just got revealed at the worst possible time.
    • Doubt it. Todd might have believed it, but I don't think the audience is supposed to. Really, by the time the story starts he's already a soulless, bloodthirsty nutcase obsessed with revenge, and he just gets worse as it continues. It didn't matter to him what Lucy was (which he didn't realise anyway); Mrs. Lovett lied, her lies led to Lucy's death, and thus Todd kills Lovett like he killed everyone else he held responsible. She may have done him a favor, but there is no way in hell you'd get him to realize that given, as you said, the circumstances.
    • He wasn't exactly happy thinking she died, either. The man was going to be miserable either way.
    • Todd probably figured either his love and caring could have helped to restore her sanity (even when insane she was the first person to recognize him, whereas Judge Turpin had to be prompted) or in a worse case scenario he could have put her out of her misery. By not being told, Todd never had an opportunity to help her get better while she spent the rest of the play being left to the mercies of those self-respecting donors.
    • Actually, and this may be a bit much character-empathy on my part, I believe that. They had both been shattered by their fifteen years apart and suffering, but we've seen how driven Todd was, and I've always found that when one can be with the one one loves everything tends to turn out for the best very quickly. It's when people remain forcibly separated that things keep going to hell. Of course, they'd still have the problem of how to get Johanna back, but Anthony would surely have helped with that.... It could have been beautiful, even after Turpin's initial litany of horrors.
    • No, I don't think he would have been happy, but he had a right to know anyway. It wasn't Mrs Lovett's choice to make.
    • Also, "trophy wife"? There were no indications of that.
      • Well all we learn about her was that she was beautiful and beautiful and oh yeah, she was virtuous too. Make of it what you will. Though arguably young Sweeney Todd's relationship with Lucy is very much like Anthony's relationship with Johanna.
    • Even if he wasn't happy, one could imagine that Todd might not be so pissed at the world if he knew she was still around. I'd think that he'd at least have something to fall back on after Turpin got away the first time, stopping "epiphany" and the "everyone deserves to die" thing he had going for him.
  • I think the movie handled Anthony and Johanna well, but in the original stage show--were we really supposed to believe they were going to sail off and live happily ever after? A slightly demented girl who'd been locked in her room nearly all her life who's obviously running off with the only man to offer out of desperation, with a boy who sings creepily obsessive songs about her hair after seeing her once, through a window? Oh yeah. I see no problems in their future.
    • I believe it. No doubt they're going to have a hard time. As you said, they don't really know anything about each other. He fell in love with an ideal; she saw a way out of a horrible situation and took it. Still, in the stage musical, it's clear that they like and care about each other. Maybe they won't live happily ever after, but they might be able to get by. That is, if you don't believe they get arrested at the end.
    • This Troper believes it as well. While they don't know each other very well, we (as the audience) know that they're good people, who obviously have a lot of regard and admiration for each other, and a desire to make the relationship work. Sometimes relationships do work simply because those in them want them to and they are quite happy with it. Also, they do seem Wrong Genre Savvy in an apparently Crapsack World, but remember, the Genre Savvy characters are all dead or institutionalized. It could very well be that being on the idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism might be their saving grace.
    • Even if you don't forsee a happy ending, Johanna would be grateful for Antony saving her and this would at least give them a small window of time to be happy together (even if it doesn't last).
    • I'm under the impression you're supposed to feel discomfort. It's such a Crapsack World they live in, and the pair are so screwed up, the future doesn't look too sunny.
      • I agree with this. I think Antony and Johanna are meant to seem like characters who've wandered onto the stage from a completely different musical -- they're naive enough to think that they can have a happy ending because they're Wrong Genre Savvy. They don't realise how screwed up the world they actually live in is.
    • They had to leave a ray of hope... and besides, with Judge Turpin dead and the whole pie shop deal blown right open, they might escape in the confusion. Antony probably has enough brains to get the hell out of London and start somewhere else with a clean slate.
    • Doesn't Anthony talk about getting on a ship after rescuing Johanna? That implies that they were going to flee the country once they got away.
    • The 2005 revival handled this quite well, by portraying Anthony and Joanna as close to completely batpoop crazy. They never actually kiss during "Kiss Me" and the scenes where they're both playing cello near each other are heartbreakingly desperate.
  • Why didn't the asylum owner's "children" jump him earlier? Nothing was stopping them.
    • He still had control the other times. When they attacked him that time, he had been locked in with them with no weapons or means to defend himself or hurt them. They probably sensed he was defenseless. Plus, the fact that Anthony clearly was able to dominate the asylum owner (held him at gunpoint) and basically told the girls "have at him" probably prompted them.
  • Why did Mrs. Lovett pick her non existent relationship with Sweeney Todd over her very real, motherly relationship with Toby. She could have easily taken Toby, all the money they made, and run off to live by the seaside like she dreamed. Chances are Sweeney never would have gone after them.
    • This is a woman who thinks baking people into pies is the best cure for bad business; you really think she would be in a right enough mind to even consider that idea might be the most reasonable one?
    • And would she want to use Toby to make her rumpled bedding legitimized?
  • What was up with Johanna's speech at the end of the movie? All that "I've never had dreams, only nightmares" thing. I don't recall that being in the play, and until she was institutionalized she would have had no reason for it. She couldn't possibly remember either of her parents (we find out for sure she doesn't recognize her father) so the fact that her dad was sent away and her mom went nuts couldn't have caused her supposed nightmares. The man who raised her only recently became creepy and leering and trying to get with her, so that couldn't be it. She wasn't allowed to leave the house, so that sucks, but she lived in opulence and was given all the material goods she could want. I can understand that leading to her depression (which she expresses in Green Finch And Linnet Bird) but none of this nonsense about nightmares and ghosts that never go away. It rings false, sounds forced and gave me the impression that she was being a drama queen for Anthony's sake. Yeah, maybe you're having nightmares now that you've been through a terrible ordeal, but you've only ever had nightmares? I'm not buying it.
    • I think you're being too literal. The girl's not stupid, and, if I recall, Anthony had just used the phrase "dreams" to mean "hopes and aspirations," and she was going along with the figure of speech and commenting that she had never hoped for anything, since she had a crapsack life.
    • Well the movie also shows that Turpin regularly spied on Joanna, so it's not that unlikely that he was extremely controlling and oppressive towards her in other ways. And just because he only proposed marriage towards Joanna recently didn't mean that he didn't show signs of lust towards her any other times. So she's a girl who's never been let out of the house and presumably never allowed to have any friends or company besides her foster father (who may or may not have been creepily lusting after her) and the Beedle. Also, this troper just got the feeling that the line meant more along the lines of "My life's been really dark and creepy and I find it really hard now to be optimistic that good stuff's going to come".
      • This Troper always theorized that Turpin may have molested Johanna (directly or indirectly, I don't know), hence her nightmares. I don't think she's a drama queen--Johanna seems pretty sincere to me.
  • So, Toby found out what was in the pies by finding a hair and fingernail in the meat? In one pie? If Lovett's quality control is so poor, how did her shop become so successful?
    • Presumably that pie was just 'the one that got away' so to speak. Or the other times, Mrs. Lovett explained it away by saying that the guy who made the pies lost a finger into the batter while fixing the machine or whatever.
    • Also bear in mind that these are the pies that Toby is making. Lovett might be more careful when she makes them herself.
    • It could also have had to do with the fact that, as Toby was eating the peculiar pie, he saw the newly-clipped corpse of the Beadle fall into the pie cellar. That probably set him off more than anything else.
  • How on earth does Sweeney not notice that Joanna is a woman?
    • Believe it or not, it can be quite easy for teenage and college-aged girls to dress up as boys about the same age.(Boys Don't Cry, anyone?) They'll just end up looking like a Pretty Boy.
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