Cerveris and LuPone to Star in Sweeney Todd on Broadway

Tony Award winners Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone are set to star in the upcoming Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, which will begin performances at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on October 3 in advance of a November 3 opening.

Directed and designed by John Doyle, with music supervision and orchestrations are by Sarah Travis, this production uses only 10 actors who also double as the show’s musicians. It was seen in London last year with a different cast, first at the Trafalgar Studios and then on the West End. Further casting for the Broadway engagement has not yet been announced.

With a book by Hugh Wheeler, adapted from Christopher Bond’s play, Sweeney Todd is based on the 19th-century legend of a London barber who is driven to murder when a malevolent judge takes his wife and child from him. His plan for revenge includes a cutthroat partnership with Mrs. Lovett, an enterprising businesswomen who is soon producing the tastiest meat pies in London. The original 1979 production of the musical ran more than 550 performances and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, and Best Director (Harold Prince). A smaller-scale 1989 revival, dubbed “Teeny Todd” by some wags, ran nearly 200 performances and earned four Tony nominations.

Cerveris, who will play the title character in the new production, won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance as John Wilkes Booth in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Sondheim’s Assassins. His other Broadway credits include Titanic and The Who’s Tommy, and he starred Off-Broadway in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

LuPone will play Mrs. Lovett. Her most recent appearance in a Broadway musical was as Reno Sweeney in the 1987 Lincoln Center Theater production of Anything Goes, for which she earned a Tony Award nomination. LuPone won the Tony in 1980 for her performance in the title role of Evita. She has played leading roles in many Sondheim shows, including A Little Night Music, Passion, and staged concert presentations of Sweeney Todd in New York and San Francisco. She and Cerveris, who co-starred in Passion, will reunite next month at the Ravinia Festival in Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle.