001: Introduction, and Ch. 1 of Sweeney Todd

IN WHICH we are introduced to a new podcast (or, rather, a reorienting of an old one) that seeks to replicate the experience of a London street urchin listening to an older kid reading/performing the latest installments of the weekly "Penny Dreadful" story papers. It's the tippy!

Then, as those early-Victorian street urchins would say — we throw the hatchet! We let fly the customary "teaser," in the form of the first chapter of SWEENEY TODD, THE BARBER OF FLEET-STREET — in which we meet Todd as he is terrifying his young apprentice, Tobias; and then we see him, by some mysterious method, cause a customer to disappear in his shop without a trace! The customer, Mr. Thornhill, was carrying a very valuable string of pearls ...