Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls

By: Doug Goheen
Cast: 8 M, 7 F, 4 flexible, extras
Performance Time: Approximately 100-120 minutes, 89 pgs.

CLASSIC HORROR. Adapted from the 1846-47 serialized penny dreadful, The String of Pearls: A Romance. Last seen at Sweeney Todd’s barbershop on Fleet Street, Lieutenant Thornhill has mysteriously gone missing. Thornhill was on his way to deliver a valuable string of pearls to Johanna Oakley on behalf of her fiancé who was thought to be lost at sea. Suspecting Todd had something to do with Thornhill’s disappearance, Johanna disguises herself as a boy and works undercover as Todd’s assistant. In the meantime, unbeknownst to Johanna, her fiancé has been imprisoned by Todd’s friend, Mrs. Lovett, in a cellar beneath her pie shop. Todd’s murderous activities are finally uncovered when the smell of decaying bodies from a crypt under St. Dunstan’s church tips off authorities to Todd’s grisly crimes. A specially constructed barber chair propels Todd’s victims through a trapdoor into the basement, where he slits their throats with a straight razor. Todd then robs his victims of their valuables and drags their bodies through an underground tunnel to Mrs. Lovett’s shop, where the bodies are butchered, made into meat pies, and sold to unsuspecting customers.

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