What would you do if your meat pie was filled with human remains? (this is about a musical you weirdo)
The musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a thriller musical written by Hugh Wheeler and composed by Stephen Sondheim.
It first opened on Broadway in 1979, becoming popular almost immediately.
It is one of the most awarded musical shows in Broadway history, winning eight tony awards, along with an Oliver award for best new musical.
And its chilling plot is one that catches the attention of both musical and horror lovers.
WHAT IS THIS THRILLER ABOUT?
A talented barber named Benjamin Barker had a beautiful wife named Lucy, and a one-year-old daughter named Johanna. Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford, two pious vultures of the law, also find Lucy beautiful. But in a much more sinister and lustful way.
To make advances on his wife, the corrupt Judge Turpin exiles Benjamin to Australia on false charges.
Fifteen years later, somewhere in the 1840’s, Benjamin returns to London with a young sailor named Anthony, going by the name Sweeney Todd. Soon after his arrival, he goes to Mrs. Lovett’s meat pie shop, where he finds out that after his arrest, his wife was raped by Judge Turpin, causing her to go insane and poison herself.
He also finds out that Judge Turpin took his daughter Joanna, making her his ward (an orphaned minor who gets adopted by someone who manages their inheritance until they reach adulthood) and raising her and his own.
From that point on, all his anger, grief, and motivation goes towards getting revenge on Judge Turpin, for ruining his marriage, his family, and ultimately, his life.
For the next 2 hours and 45 minutes, he yearns to slit Turpin’s throat with one of his silver razors.
MRS LOVETT
One of the most iconic and famous staples of the musical is one of its main characters: Nellie Lovett, best known as Mrs. Lovett.
Mrs. Lovett is a baker in Fleet Street, London, who sells disgusting and poorly made meat pies and is located just below Sweeney Todd’s old barber shop.
We quickly learn that the two used to briefly know each other.
After Mrs. Lovett finds out his identity, she quickly joins Mr. Todd’s plan on killing the judge, becoming his accomplice and business partner by churning his victims into meat pies and selling them to the public, giving Mr. Todd a great load of practice and a good load of money for the both of them.
But besides being Mr. Todd’s accomplice and business partner, what is it about Mrs. Lovett’s character that makes her so significant and unique, and one of Broadway’s most well-known and delicious roles?
For this character analysis, I will specifically be using the 1982 filmed performance of Sweeney Todd, starring Angela Lansbury (who you most likely recognize as Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast) in the role of Mrs. Lovett.
WORST PIES IN LONDON
We are introduced to Mrs. Lovett at the beginning of act one, when Mr. Todd goes to her pie shop in Fleet Street.
The moment she sees him in her Pie Shop, she quickly sits him down and gives him a meat pie, beginning the song “The Worst Pies in London.”
In this song she quickly expresses her eagerness to finally have a customer, “All I meant is that I haven’t seen a customer for weeks!”, and how “no one even comes in, even to inhale.”
She calls her pies disgusting and admits to not being good at making them, ever so shamelessly.
She even sings about another pie baker, Mrs. Mooney, and how she’s noticed that she’s been using the neighbors’ cats as her source of meat.
She also sings “Just the thought of it’s enough to make you sick, and I’m telling you them pussy cat is quick.” which implies that she on one occasion had tried to capture a cat but failed to do so and gave up.
This song shows Mrs. Lovetts rambling and quirky personality right off the bat, giving us a good quick insight into who she is right at the start of the show.
Worst Pies in London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqapHRAqnfk
POOR THING!
After this number, Sweeney asks her why she doesn’t rent out the room above her shop if times are so hard, and Mrs. Lovett explains that no one will rent it out because many think it’s haunted in the song “Poor Thing.”
In this song, she tells the story of a beautiful, foolish barber named Benjamin Barker’s wife.
She describes how a Judge and a Beadle wanted her like mad and left her with nothing but grief and a year-old kid after shipping off her husband to the south.
Afterwards, the Beadle convinces her to come to the Judges house with the illusion that the Judge is remorseful for his actions.
When she gets to his house, they’re having a ball all in masks, and she has no idea where Judge Turpin is until she is cornered by the crowd and laughed at as Judge Turpin rapes her.
Mr. Todd screams in agony to this information, asking “Would no one have mercy on her?”
When he asks her what ultimately happed to Lucy and his child, she informs him that Lucy killed herself with poison, and that his daughter Johanna was adopted/taken in by Judge Turpin.
This is when Mrs. Lovett finds out that he is actually Benjamin Barker.
This is also where Mrs. Lovett’s string of lies begin.
Poor Thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVAe8fSsGLw
BEGGAR WOMAN
Along with being introduced to Mrs. Lovett in the beginning of act one, we are also introduced to the beggar woman, less than three songs into the show.
The beggar woman begs for alms (money for poor people) on the streets of London, wearing dirty and ripped clothing and carrying a baby doll.
When she meets Sweeney Todd, she says “don’t I know you?”, but Mr. Todd quickly shoos her away.
You’d think a man so driven to kill to avenge his wife would recognize her even fifteen years later, right?
Yes, Lucy did poison herself, in that regard Mrs. Lovett did tell the truth.
But Lucy didn’t die from the poison. Instead, it drove her insane, and Mrs. Lovett knows this.
Every time she encounters the beggar woman, she shoos her away, and seeing how Lucy used to live in the room above the pie shop before being forced to be poor and beg for money on the streets, it’s fair to say that Mrs. Lovett most likely threw her out after her suicide attempt.
But why?
BY THE SEA
After a hard day of Mrs. Lovett selling pies and Mr. Todd slitting the throats of men coming for a quick and clean shave in act two, the two are taking a break from their sharp labor.
Mrs. Lovett is trying to talk to Sweeney, but there’s one thing he won’t stop bringing up.
“There must be a way to the Judge.”
“Bloody old Judge, always talking about the bloody old Judge, here we got a nice respectable business going!” Mrs. Lovett says, tired of hearing about Sweeney’s plan to avenge Lucy.
She then begins the song “By the Sea.” by kissing Todd repeatedly on the cheek.
“Oh, Mr. Todd
I’m so happy
I could eat you up, I really could
You know what I’d like to do, Mr. Todd?
What I dream
If the business stays as good?”
As she prances around Sweeney, she sings about the future she wants them to have together, consisting of them living by the sea, growing old together, and even getting married.
“By the sea
Married nice and proper
By the sea
Bring along your chopper
To the seaside, whoa-oh
By the beautiful sea.”
She also gives him a kiss on the lips after the song ends.
It is no question, however, that Mrs. Lovetts love for Sweeney is completely one sided.
Sweeny couldn’t care any less.
During the entire song, he barley gives any of his attention to what she is saying, letting her delusion harmonically flow without giving it any input or encouragement besides occasionally saying “anything you say.”
The friendship formed between Todd and Lovett is built upon the key task of killing Judge Turpin.
They build a type of bond with each other not because they have similar interests or because they both love one another, but rather because the situation they built for themselves is putting them in the position of working together.
Sweeney kills his customers; Mrs. Lovett covers up his crime by turning his victims into meat pies.
Even though they’re both helping each other, Sweeney really doesn’t view her as anything more than a type of business partner.
By the Sea is nothing but a clear and perfect example of Mrs. Lovetts delusion towards her relationship with Sweeney Todd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ukJ54kXlg&list=PLzE_4Hyo2iw2w4_t2jwGRKZv9vbhIxnPb&index=31
FINALE
At the end of act two, Sweeney finally has an opportunity to kill Judge Turpin, but when he enters his parlor shop to wait for him, he comes face to face with the beggar woman again.
She repeats the same line as before. “Don’t I know you?”
At that very moment, Sweeney sees Turpin walking up to the shop.
“The Judge! I have no time!” he says, before slitting the beggar woman’s throat, and pulling the lever connected to his shaving chair, which when pulled down, causes the back of the chair to fall, making the person inside the chair slide down a chute and into the bakehouse downstairs.
After finally killing the Judge, he goes down to the bakehouse after hearing Mrs. Lovett scream.
As she attempts to drag away the beggar woman’s body, she explains that the Judge was tugging at her skirt before completely dying.
Sweeney impatiently makes her open the doors to the furnace.
Mrs. Lovett tells him not to come near the beggar woman, but he’s already reaching out to start dragging her.
“What’s the matter with you? It’s only some crazy old beggar woman-” at that moment, he screams in agony once again, realizing that the woman he killed wasn’t just some beggar woman, but his wife, Lucy.
And at that moment he also realizes that he’s been lied to this entire time.
“You knew she lived! From the moment I walked into your shop, you knew she lived!”
As he sings in regret over Lucy’s body, Mrs. Lovett is frantically trying to justify her actions, how she thought it were to be better if Todd believed that his Lucy was dead.
“No, no not lied at all. No, I never lied. Said she took the poison, she did, never said that she died. Poor thing, come she lived, but it left her weak in the head, all she did for months was just lie there in bed.”
But it doesn’t take long for her to admit that she had lied to him from the very beginning, shamelessly and without an ounce of remorse or guilt.
“Yes, I lied, because I love you. I’d be twice the wife she was. I love you, could that thing have cared for you like me?”
Suddenly, Sweeney makes a huge switch and begins to compliment Mrs. Lovett, pulling away from Lucy’s body and seemingly forgiving her.
“Mrs. Lovett, you’re a bloody wonder, eminently practical and yet appropriate as always. As you’ve said repeatedly there’s little point in dwelling on the past. Now come here my love, nothing to fear my love best. What’s dead, is dead.”
Mrs. Lovett, lost in her love and selfishness, believes him and lets him wrap his arms around her as they begin to dance.
Even at the very end, she still believes that she hasn’t done anything wrong.
Sweeney has no ounce of forgiveness however and takes advantage of her trust towards him as he waltzes her closer and closer to the furnace, throwing her inside and holding the doors shut.
Mrs. Lovett burns to death.
I believe it is fair to say that Mrs. Lovett is one of the best-written characters in Broadway history, and if the musical taught us anything about her character, it’s that she is truly the meaning of pure delusion.
Mrs. Lovett isn’t a villain, nor a woman of any good moral standpoint. She’s a delusional woman who tries to get what she wants by any means possible, smiling gayly as she does so. And that is what makes her so bloody brilliant.
(worst pies in London)
(By the Sea)
