Sweeney Todd on Broadway

Attend the tale. 

For the first time since 1980, Broadway audiences will experience Stephen Sondheim’s Tony Award®–winning score as it was performed in the original production—with Jonathan Tunick’s classic 26-player orchestration on an epic scale. Tony Award–winning director Thomas Kail (Hamilton) helms the return of this musical thriller starring Tony and Grammy® nominee Josh Groban (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) as Sweeney Todd, and Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford (Sunday in the Park With George, Kinky Boots) as Mrs. Lovett. Tony winner Alex Lacamoire (Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen) reunites with Kail as Music Supervisor, and Olivier Award winner Steven Hoggett (Once, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) choreographs this new production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, back on Broadway with Tony, Emmy, and Grammy nominee Josh Groban and Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford. Set an alert for Sweeney Todd tickets on TodayTix.

This thriller musical is titled in full Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The show begins when the title character returns to London after a long prison stint, and he has one thing on his mind: revenge on the judge who wrongfully convicted him. With the help of a devious meat pie shop owner named Mrs. Lovett, he concocts a plan: He'll kill his victims in the barber's chair, and Mrs. Lovett will cook them into pies so there's no evidence. Revenge is a dish best served hot in Sweeney Todd, a deliciously dark story of vengeance, obsession, and love, and the lengths people go for them.

Sweeney Todd, with a book by Hugh Wheeler and a score by Stephen Sondheim, is the latest in a string of recent Sondheim revivals: His musicals Assassins and Company both played in New York in 2021. Plus, the last production of Sweeney Todd in New York (an immersive Off-Broadway show in which the theatre was converted into a pie shop) was only in 2017, alongside a Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park with George.

Sweeney Todd has appeared on Broadway three times before. The world-premiere production opened in 1979 and ran for over a year. That production won eight Tony Awards out of nine nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Actor and Actress awards for Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury — Sondheim's personal choices to play Todd and Mrs. Lovett.

The first revival was in 1989, and the second in 2005. Both were nominated for Best Revival, and its respective stars — Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler, and Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone — all got acting nominations. Perhaps this Groban and Ashford-led revival of Sweeney Todd on Broadway will follow in its predecessors' footsteps.

Groban was Tony-nominated for his first, and only other, Broadway performance: as Pierre in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 in 2017. His performance at the following year's Tony Awards, which he co-hosted with Sara Bareilles, earned him two Emmy nominations, and his 20-plus year music career has made him a three-time Grammy nominee.

Ashford is a Broadway veteran, having appeared in seven previous productions including Wicked, Legally Blonde, and Sunday in the Park with George. Her Kinky Boots performance earned her a 2013 Tony nomination, and two years later, her You Can't Take It With You performance snagged her the win.

Take a trip to Fleet Street for Sweeney Todd on Broadway. Check back to see when Sweeney Todd tickets will be on sale on TodayTix.

What to Watch For

• This Sweeney Todd revival will feature Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations for a 26-piece band, as the original Broadway production did. Neither of the previous Sweeney Todd revivals used the full, original orchestrations.
• The show poster uses the same font and color for the musical's title as the original Broadway poster.
• Barber refuted? Sweeney Todd is a mini-Hamilton reunion: That show's director, Thomas Kail, and music supervisor, Alex Lacamoire, hold the same jobs for this production.
• Groban is such a big Sweeney Todd fan that he named his dog after the title character.
• The Sweeney Todd musical is based on a same-named 1973 play by Christopher Bond, but the title character actually first appeared in a Victorian-era serial fiction story called The String of Pearls. His story was immediately adapted into a few melodramas in the mid-to-late 1800s, too; one of those was produced on Broadway in 1924.
• When Sweeney Todd first opened on Broadway, the then-director of The Metropolitan Opera reportedly said he would have produced the show there given the opportunity. He saw Sweeney Todd's high-drama tale as "a modern American opera." Though the Met didn't end up producing the show, lots of other opera companies have.