Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Hope and the mysterious Sweeney Todd, whom Anthony has recently rescued at sea and befriended, dock in London. A beggar woman sexually solicits them, appearing to recognize Todd for a moment ("No Place Like London"), and Todd shoos her away. Todd relates some of his troubled past to Anthony: he was a naive barber, banished by a crooked judge who lusted after Todd's wife ("The Barber and His Wife"). Leaving Anthony, Todd enters a meat pie shop on Fleet Street, where the owner, the slatternly widow, Mrs. Lovett, laments the scarcity of meat and customers ("Worst Pies in London"). When
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street former general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, demanding to know why he had not put it on at the Met. To which Chapin replied: "I would have put it on like a shot if I'd had the opportunity. There would have been screams and yells but I wouldn't have given a damn. Because it is an opera. A modern American opera." The citizens of London, who act as a Greek chorus throughout the play, drop a body bag into a shallow grave. Sweeney Todd rises forth ("The Ballad of Sweeney Todd"), and introduces the drama. In 1846, young sailor Anthony