Sweeney Todd Pearls" and have persisted to the present day. In two books, Peter Haining argued that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800. Nevertheless, other researchers who have tried to verify his citations find nothing in these sources to back Haining's claims. A late (1890s) reference to the urban legend of the murderous barber can be found in the poem by the Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson—"The Man from Ironbark". In his 2012 novel" Dodger", Terry Pratchett portrays Sweeney Todd as a tragic figure, having lost his mind after being exposed to the horrors of the
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Andrew Glover during the New Zealand tour), David Rogers-Smith as Adolfo Pirelli (replaced by Robert Tucker in New Zealand), Ross Hannaford as Tobias Ragg (replaced by Joel Grainger in New Zealand), Blake Bowden as Anthony Hope (replaced James Benjamin Rodgers in New Zealand), Amelia Berry as Johanna, Dimity Shepherd as the Beggar Woman (replaced by Helen Medlyn in New Zealand), and Jeremy Kleeman as Jonas Fogg. The first opera company to mount "Sweeney Todd" was the Houston Grand Opera in a production directed by Hal Prince, which ran from June 14, 1984 through June 24, 1984 for a total