Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford to star in ‘Sweeney Todd’ Broadway revival

This is the musical's fourth Broadway production since 1979.

God, that's good (news)! A new Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Sweeney Todd has been announced. Grammy, Tony, and Emmy Award nominee Josh Groban will star in the title role, with Tony Award winner Annaleigh Ashford as Mrs. Lovett. Performances are set to start on February 26 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre ahead of a March 26 opening night.

Groban is a multi-platinum recording artist who has sold millions of records worldwide. He was last seen on Broadway as Pierre in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, a role that marked his Broadway debut and earned him a 2017 Tony nomination.

Ashford is a stage veteran whose recent Broadway roles include Dot in Sunday in the Park with George (opposite Jake Gyllenhaal), Essie in You Can't Take It With You (winning Ashford her first Tony), and Lauren in Kinky Boots (earning her first Tony nomination).

Additional casting for the revival has yet to be announced. Thomas Kail will direct the production; he is best known as the Tony Award-winning director of Hamilton and In the Heights on Broadway.

The creative team also includes choreographer Steven Hoggett, Tony-winning music supervisor Alex Lacamoire, Tony-winning set designer Mimi Lien, Tony-nominated costume designer Emilio Sosa, Tony Award-winning lighting designer Natasha Katz, and Tony-winning sound designer Nevin Steinberg. The show will also feature the original Sweeney Todd 26-piece orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.

Based on a Victorian-era literary character and a 1973 play by Christopher Bond, Sweeney Todd follows a barber who was wrongfully exiled from his town and his profession. Under a new name and with the help of the devious meat pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, he swears revenge on the judge who framed him. Todd and Lovett devise a plot where he "accidentally" cuts the throats of his haircutting patients, and she bakes them into meat pies to rid all traces of evidence.

This dark-comedy tale of love and murder has appeared on Broadway three times before, first in 1979 with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. The musical also has a film adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Sweeney Todd is the latest of multiple recent Sondheim revivals in New York. Revivals of Company on Broadway and Assassins off Broadway opened in fall 2021, and a revival of Into the Woods is currently on Broadway after a limited Off-Broadway engagement with Encores! at New York City Center.

^{Photo credit: Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban. (Photo by Franz Szony)}