Yahoo News Josh Groban is Broadway's new Sweeney Todd in revival from Hamilton director
Broadway is hungry for Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford.
The performers have joined the upcoming stage revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, with Groban in the title role as a murderous barber who slits his victims' throats before his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett (the Tony Award-winning Ashford), bakes their remains into meat pies.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images Josh Groban joins 'Sweeney Todd' on Broadway.
The show hails from director Thomas Kail, who won a Tony for helming Hamilton alongside producer Jeffrey Seller, who will return to work with Kail on Sweeney Todd.
"This show is full of such great scary fun. It is Grand Guignol, it is penny dreadful," the pop star — who previously named his dog Sweeney after the musical character — told the The New York Times of joining the production. "There is obviously a plot here that is absurd and monstrous, but then there is also an incredible back story to this character that makes the role even more terrifying, because for all intents and purposes this was a civilized, good man that was driven to this."
Added Ashford: "[Mrs. Lovett] is one of the finest ladies of the American musical theater canon. She does a terrible thing, and she is a monster, but I've always seen her as a woman who is trying to find love and trying to be loved."
Attend the tale. @joshgroban and @TheAAshford star in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd on Broadway. Previews begin February 26. Get American Express® Early Access, today at 10 AM ET through Friday, 9/16 at 9:59 AM ET. Terms apply. pic.twitter.com/OWf3BSFQXa
— Sweeney Todd (@SweeneyToddBway) September 6, 2022
Groban's role marks his return to Broadway after leading the 2016 cast of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and scoring a Tony nod; Ashford has seven Broadway shows to her credit, ultimately winning her Tony in 2015 for You Can't Take It With You. Her first nomination came in 2013 for her performance in Kinky Boots.
Sweeney Todd begins previews on Feb. 26. It will open officially on March 26 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New York City.
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