Aaron Tveit, Sutton Foster to replace Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford in Broadway’s ‘Sweeney Todd’
NEW YORK — Broadway’s latest hit production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has found its new leads to replace Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford in the new year.
Producers announced Tuesday that Tony Award-winners Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster will join the cast of the beloved Stephen Sondheim thriller beginning Feb. 9 at New York City’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre,
Groban and Ashford, who were both nominated for 2023 Tony Awards for their performances, will play their final show on Jan. 14.
Tveit and Foster will play cannibalistic murderers Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett for a limited 12-week engagement, scheduled to conclude May 5.
Tveit last appeared on Broadway in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” which earned him his first Tony Award win in 2020. Foster, who has two Tony Awards to her credit, recently starred opposite Hugh Jackman in the Broadway revival of “The Music Man.”
Helmed by “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail, the new “Sweeney Todd” revival has been a box office draw since opening in March. “Stranger Things” star Gaten Matarazzo, Tony Award-winner Ruthie Ann Miles, Daniel Yearwood, Maria Bilbao, Jamie Jackson, John Rapson and Nicholas Christopher round out the cast.
Daily News theater critic Chris Jones heralded the show in his opening night review: “At once funny, scary and disarmingly moving, this must-see production is content to peel back any cobwebs or artifice and let Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Gothic revenge tragedy of a musical howl anew with the agony of human injustice and the ameliorating constancy of love.”
“Sweeney Todd” remains one of the most popular musicals by Sondheim, who died in 2021 at age 91.
The thriller debuted on Broadway in 1979 and centers on a 19th-century London barber who kills his customers, whose bodies are then baked into pies. The original production, which starred Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in the lead roles, won best musical at the Tony Awards in 1980.
