REVENGE AS ENTERTAINMENT

With Will Swenson and Lesli Margherita,
La Mirada goes all in for this major revival

Some shows you make time for. Others you plan around. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is one of those shows — if it’s done right. When the musical first arrived in 1979 (winning 8 Tonys), the record never left my turntable. With a darkly funny book by Hugh Wheeler (who also wrote and won Tonys for A Little Night Music and Candide), Stephen Sondheim’s blood-soaked masterpiece simply doesn’t survive on nostalgia. It needs singers who can handle the score, a director who won’t soften the edges, and a production willing to spend what the show demands. La Mirada Theatre’s upcoming revival checks those boxes. It plays January 30-February 22, 2026, and given the casting, I promise a sell-out (and since theatres began dynamic pricing, waiting can be costly).

The main reason this major revival is generating buzz are the leads. Broadway star Will Swenson — dynamic in Hair, uncanny as Neil Diamond in A Beautiful Noise, and romantic in 110 in the Shade (where he met his wife, Audra McDonald) — will star as “Sweeney Todd.” Swenson has already proven, most notably in Off-Broadway’s Assassins, that he knows how to sit comfortably in dark material without overselling it.

The dazzling Lesli Margherita returns to La Mirada to play Mrs. Lovett. Before she became a Broadway Baby in Matilda and the recent Gypsy (starring McDonald) as Tessie Turra, Margherita was a So Cal star as Audrey at La Mirada in Little Shop of Horrors, the title role in Reprise’s Kiss Me, Kate and Aldonza in Musical Theatre West’s Man of La Mancha, a turn for which I wrote, “She can seductively snarl in one song and be wistfully tender in another.” She can be genuinely funny without blunting a character’s edge. That combination — restraint on one side, sharp comic intelligence on the other — is exactly what Sweeney Todd needs.

This is one of the greatest American musicals, but Sweeney is unforgiving — there’s nowhere to hide in Sondheim’s score — and this lineup suggests a production built around singers who can actually deliver it, not just survive it. This is not a musical that rewards restraint (Josh Groban sang the hell out of it on Broadway, but he was as menacing as a cheesecake). The humor is cruel, the emotions are raw, and the score leaves no room for vocal shortcuts. A weak Sweeney feels long and dull. A strong one crackles. Everything about this production’s casting points to a company that understands the difference.

Joining Swenson and Margherita will be Chris Hunter as “Anthony,” Allison Sheppard as “Johanna,” Norman Large as “Judge Turpin,” Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper as “Beadle Bamford,” Austyn Myers as “Tobias,” Andrew Polec as “Pirelli,” Meghan Andrews as “The Beggar Woman,” and Jeff Lowe as “The Overseer.”  The Ensemble will feature (in alphabetical order) Gabbie Adner, Anthony Cannarella, Ryan Dietz, Grant Hodges, Bets Malone, Drew Margolis, Michael McClure, Hassan Nazari-Robati, Lizzy Sheck, Rianny Vasquez, and Toni Elizabeth White.

La Mirada Theatre is a particularly good fit. Over the years, the venue has built a reputation for mounting big musicals with full orchestras, bold design choices, and production values that are frequently better than what turns up on tour. When La Mirada commits to scale, it commits fully — and Sweeney Todd deserves that kind of backing.

Jason Alexander (photo by Rebecca J Michelson)

Direction matters just as much here. Jason Alexander, who recently starred at La Mirada in their triumphant Fiddler on the Roof, will helm Sweeney. As he proved with Fiddler, Alexander knows how to play it straight, trust the material, and let the drama and comedy sit side by side without apology. There’s no need to underline the jokes or dress up the darkness. Sondheim and Wheeler already did the work.

An infamous tale that originally appeared as a penny dreadful serial in 1867, Sweeney Todd follows an unjustly exiled barber (Todd) as he returns to nineteenth-century London seeking vengeance against the lecherous judge who framed him and ravaged his young wife. The road to revenge leads Todd to Mrs. Lovett, a resourceful proprietress of a failing pie shop, above which he opens a new barber practice. Mrs. Lovett’s luck sharply shifts when Todd’s thirst for blood inspires the integration of an ingredient into her meat pies that has the people of London lining up… and the carnage has only just begun.

At its best, Sweeney Todd isn’t about shock or spectacle. It’s about obsession, grievance, and what happens when revenge becomes a way of life. With the right cast, the right director, and a production willing to go big when it needs to, it becomes one of the most bracing musicals ever written. La Mirada’s Sweeney Todd looks ready to be that kind of production — not a polite revival, not a novelty, but a serious, fully realized take on a show that still has teeth.

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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts
14900 La Mirada Blvd.
Thu at 7:30; Fri at 8; Sat at 2 & 8; Sun at 1:30 & 6:30
January 30-February 22, 2026 (opening on Jan. 31 at 8)
for tickets ($20–$110, prices subject to change), call 562.944.9801 or visit La Mirada Theatre

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