Philip Quast to join cast of Sweeney Todd at Coliseum

Philip Quast has been cast as 'Judge Turpin' in the English National Opera and The Gradelinnit Company production of a semi-staged version of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street which will run at the London Coliseum for 13 performances between 30 March and 12 April 2015.

Philip Quast joins previously mentioned Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and British actress Emma Thompson in the lead roles of Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett, who recently starred in a concert production of the musical at the Lincoln Center in New York City.

Further casting for the production is still to be announced.

Philip Quast's many London stage credits include Grahame Chandler in The Fix at the Donmar Warehouse, Georges Seurat in Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in The Park with George and Emile de Becque in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific both for the National Theatre, Juan Peron in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita at the Adelphi Theatre and Georges in La Cage Aux Folles for the Menier Chocolate Factory. Quast played Javert in the original Australian cast of Les Misérables as well as in the West End. The New York Philharmonic's semi-staged production of Sweeney Todd as Judge Turpin was Quast's New York stage debut.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will be directed by Lonny Price and feature The ENO orchestra, conducted by David Charles Abell, with orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.

The musical features a score by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler from an adaptation by Christopher Bond. It received its world premiere at the Uris Theatre on Broadway in March 1979, directed by Harold Prince, starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. The show received eight Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.

Set in Victorian London, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street tells the story of the eponymous barber who seeks vengeance on what he sees as a merciless world by murdering his customers and, with the help of his landlady, the romantically inclined Mrs. Lovett, bakes their bodies into meat pies, which are fed to London's avid and unknowing populace.