The first time I ever saw “Sweeney Todd” was a wonderful mid-1980s PBS broadcast of a stage production starring George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. It was on my Amazon wish list at one time; may still be there.

Anyway, Mark Evanier had a YouTube clip on his site today of Hearn and Patti LuPone performing one of the songs from the musical. This is from one of those concerts where they perform all the songs from a musical, and sometimes enough dialogue to give you the basic story, without actually staging it.

If you are unfamiliar with “Sweeney Todd,” it’s sort of a gruesome musical about a man named Sweeney Todd who is wrongfully imprisoned for many years and swears vengeance on the judge who imprisoned him. He returns to his home town as a barber and sets up shop upstairs from Mrs. Lovett, who makes meat pies. Mrs. Lovett falls for Sweeney Todd, and when he ends up killing someone, she proposes a novel solution for disposing of the body. To wit: