Act 1

The play opens on a street by the London docks where Sweeney Todd and Anthony Hope have just come into port. When Anthony expresses his pleasure at being back in England, "the best place in the world," Sweeney suggests that he will soon be disappointed. A Beggar Woman appears and Anthony gives her money. After she tells Sweeney that he looks familiar, he shoos her away but not before she propositions him. Sweeney tells Anthony a tale of a "foolish" barber and his beautiful wife whose lives were destroyed by "a pious vulture of the law." He admits that he does not know the lady's fate.

Sweeney walks up to a pie shop on Fleet Street run by Mrs. Lovett, who admits, as she flicks flies and dirt off her pies, that the pies are "the worst" in London. She admires the "enterprising" nature of the woman...