Theater News

Have Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford Been Cast in a Broadway Revival of Sweeney Todd?

It would be the latest in a string of high-profile Sondheim revivals.

Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford are rumored to be attached to a planned Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd.
Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford are rumored to be attached to a planned Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd.
(© David Gordon)

A Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd is slated for spring 2023, with Josh Groban in the title role and Annaleigh Ashford as Mrs. Lovett. This is according to Philip Boroff's Broadway Journal, which broke the story. No official announcement has been made, although we've been hearing this particular rumor for months.

With a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler, Sweeney Todd tells the story of a Fleet Street barber who returns to London hell-bent on revenge. But how to dispose of the bodies? Mrs. Lovett, the proprietress of a pie shop situated just beneath Sweeney's salon, has an idea.

Nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in The Great Comet, Groban was last seen on Broadway as a special guest in Freestyle Love Supreme. A Tony Award winner for You Can't Take It With You, Ashford was last seen on Broadway in the revival of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George.

Allegedly, producer Jeffrey Seller and director Thomas Kail (the team behind Hamilton) are attached to the project. It would be the latest in a string of significant Sondheim revivals in recent years, following CSC's Assassins, the Broadway revival of Company, the Encores! Broadway transfer of Into the Woods, and the forthcoming NYTW production of Merrily We Roll Along.

Widely considered the greatest musical theater composer of his generation, Stephen Sondheim died last November at the age of 91.