Sarah Rice, Original Johanna of Sweeney Todd, Dies at 68
(© Martha Swope/New York Public Library for the Performing Arts)
Sarah Rice, the original Johanna in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd, has died at the of 68.
Born in Japan and raised in Arizona, Rice came to New York with “$100, two cats and a piano,” according to her biography. Following roles off-off-Broadway, she was cast as Luisa in The Fantasticks at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, a role she would play on and off for several years. Sweeney Todd would be her only Broadway credit; she earned a Theatre World Award for her performance and is immortalized on the musical’s original cast recording. Off-Broadway, she appeared in David Bucknam and Lisa Peterson’s Virginia Woolf-inspired musical The Waves at New York Theatre Workshop in 1990.
Her repertoire of roles through the years included Anne in A Little Night Music, Cunegonde in Candide, Liesl in The Sound of Music, Marian in The Music Man, Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance, and many others. A fixture in the New York City cabaret scene, she was a Bistro and MAC Award winner, and a regular of the Sondheim Unplugged series and the Mabel Mercer Foundation’s cabaret convention. Rice was also an accomplished theramin player.
Rice had been fighting cancer for some time, but she continued to perform until the end of her life. Social media posts from friends and colleagues state that she had been well enough to sing at church up until a week before her death.
