We want to congratulate Annaleigh Ashford on garnering her role as Mrs. Lovett in the Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd.” (See below article from CBS Sunday Morning on the show). Annaleigh first came to our attention when she co-starred with Thomas Middleditch in the CBS television series “B Positive”, a delightful comedy about an addicted woman (“Gina”) who, out of the blue, agrees to donate her kidney to an old classmate who is dying of kidney failure.
From Wikipedia:
Ashford was born in Denver on June 25, 1985, the daughter of Holli Swanson, an elementary school gym teacher, and Chris Swanson, a small-business owner. Ashford participated in Kids Cross Country and track at the age of six, coached by her mother. Ashford discovered that she hated running, and it was very clear that she was more interested in the race uniforms than the actual races. The last race she ever ran was the 400 meter dash. After that, her mother enrolled her in the nearest dance studio. She began practicing at Kit Andrée’s Dance and Performing Arts Center the same day she started the second grade. She acted and sang in numerous performances and competitions in her hometown.
Ashford’s professional career began at age nine in Denver, when she was cast as Tina Denmark, the lead in the musical Ruthless! At fourteen, she was profiled as “The Teen to Watch” by the Rocky Mountain News. Other Denver credits include appearing in the ensemble of The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and Paint Your Wagon, as well as in Little Women as Amy March, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella as Ella, Grease as Sandy Dumbrowski, and Anything Goes as Reno Sweeney. She graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in three years, at the age of 16, and then attended Marymount Manhattan College, where she earned a degree in theatre in another three years, at the age of 19. While attending Marymount Manhattan College, Ashford played Rosa Bud in The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Emma in Tell Me on a Sunday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annaleigh_Ashford
https://www.annaleighashford.com
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CBS Sunday Morning: Josh Groban and the return of “Sweeney Todd”
By Anthony Mason, CBS News
He’s the new “Demon Barber of Fleet Street” … and Josh Groban just learned how to give a close shave. He actually took barber lessons: “I did! I wanted the shaving community, should they come to this show, to be really impressed,” he said.
He demonstrated for willing subject Anthony Mason: “We would start with the neck maybe. And then we would turn and we would do your cheek this way.”
“Is there an art to these decisive strokes?” Mason asked.
“I’ve been winging it! This is where the improvisation of theater comes in!” Groban said. “I’ve never given anybody an actual, like, sharp razor shave. We’ve enjoyed you on television for a long, long time. Thank you so much for spending your final day with us here.”
“This is where I say my last words?”
“That’s right. Captured in high def!”
In “Sweeney Todd,” the new Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s iconic musical, most of his customers don’t survive.
“You’re not known for playing Evil,” said Mason.
“No, I’m not,” Groban said. “Which is part of the fun.”
As Sweeney, Groban has a co-conspirator: Annaleigh Ashford plays Mrs. Lovett, who sweetly disposes of Sweeney’s victims in her meat pies. “On top, she’s just a bubbling, bubbling, bubbling little pot of magic,” Ashford said. “And underneath, it’s this stew that’s extremely complicated.
“You know when you’re playing Iago, you don’t know you’re the bad guy. And so that’s always sort of the way that I’ve viewed Mrs. Lovett: She doesn’t think she’s bad, she’s surviving. Mrs. Lovett at her core is a survivor. And she needs Sweeney Todd, because she’s a woman in a man’s world.”
The original 1979 production, which starred Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, and Len Cariou as Sweeney, won eight Tonys. The unlikely inspiration for the musical was a dark Victorian melodrama, but Sondheim “thought it could sing.”
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Go here to watch the whole story:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/josh-groban-and-the-return-of-sweeney-todd/
http://www.joshgroban.com
http://www.annaleighashford.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Positive
Photo: Sweeney Todd poster
https://www.facebook.com/SweeneyToddBway/photos
Denver’s Annaleigh Ashford Starring With Josh Groban in “Sweeney Todd” on Broadway!
