Role in The Musical
In Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Tim Burton's 2007 film adaptation, Todd pays a visit to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop below his old home after 15 years in exile, seeking information about his lost family. Mrs. Lovett recognizes him as her former tenant, Benjamin Barker, with whom she was (and is) secretly in love. She informs him that his wife, Lucy, was raped by Judge Turpin — who exiled Todd on a false charge — and informs Todd that Lucy was so distraught that she poisoned herself with arsenic. Seeking vengeance, Todd reopens his shaving parlour above the shop, and slits the throats of his customers. Mrs. Lovett initiates a plan for Todd to send the corpses of his victims down a chute that leads to her bakehouse. She then uses the flesh to bake meat pies, which makes her business very successful.
She and Todd take in an orphan, Tobias Ragg, to whom she becomes like a mother. She also dreams of marrying Todd, who is completely uninterested in her.
In the story's climactic "Final Sequence", Todd murders Turpin and a beggar woman, and discovers that the latter is actually Lucy. Todd confronts Mrs. Lovett, who confesses that Lucy survived drinking the poison but was driven insane, reduced to begging. Mrs. Lovett then confesses her love to Todd, and promises she would be a better wife than Lucy ever was. Todd pretends to forgive her, gathering her in his arms — only to throw her into the pie oven, where she burns to death. Following Lovett's death, Todd cradles his dead wife's body, while Tobias emerges from hiding and slits Todd's throat as revenge for killing Lovett.
Read more about this topic: Mrs. Lovett
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