[1] In the popular musical adaptation by Stephen Sondheim, inspired by Christopher Bond's play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1973), she is the daughter of Benjamin Barker and his wife, Lucy.

Soon the full grisly horror of Todd's activities are discovered and the dismembered remains of hundreds of his victims found in the crypt underneath St Dunstan's church.

Meanwhile it is discovered that Johanna's lover, Mark Ingestrie, is not dead, but has come to London in reduced circumstances and has been imprisoned in the cellars beneath Mrs. Lovett's pie shop and put to work as the cook.

In Stephen Sondheim's musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, after Benjamin Barker is sent away to Australia, and Lucy raped and driven insane, Judge Turpin takes their daughter Johanna as his ward, raising her as his own.

In the final scene, Johanna, Anthony and two policemen encounter Toby in the bakehouse, mindlessly turning the meat grinder, surrounded by the corpses of Todd, Lucy, Mrs. Lovett, and Turpin.

This more confined portrayal of her character differs from the earlier The String Of Pearls version, in which she is offered more autonomy and a perhaps more assertive or adventurous control over her destiny by dressing as a boy.

Considering that cannibalism is a central theme in the film, the emaciated, unkempt and agitated appearance of the female inmates in Fogg’s presence foreshadows the manner of his grisly death at their hands.

In "Poor Thing", Mrs Lovett describes Johanna as the "year-old kid", which, added to the fifteen years Sweeney has spent in Australia, makes her sixteen.