Sweeney Todd's Victorian London and a Chat with Broadway's Sarah Rice

XXXIX. As the famed "demon barber of Fleet Street" gets ready to flash his razor and do his deeds once again in a new Broadway production, The Gilded Gentleman goes back in time to the early years of London's Victoria era to look at just how Sweeney Todd and his tale came to be.

Born in the world of the sensational and gruesome stories of the "penny dreadfuls", Sweeney Todd and his story were quite different from what theater audiences know today.

The episode features a very special treat - an interview with Sarah Rice who created the role of Johanna, Sweeney Todd's daughter in the original 1979 Broadway production of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". Sarah shares what it was like to get the role, how she went about creating the character, and most of all, what it was like to work with extraordinary colleagues such as Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou, and of course Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince themselves.

In the interview, Sarah shares the most important lessons she learned from Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury in particular.