Sarah Rice, the theater actress best known for portraying Johanna in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, has died. Rice died of cancer on Saturday, Jan. 6, her friend and fellow performer Rebecca Caine announced in an Instagram tribute. Rice was 68.
“Farewell my sweet, kind friend Sarah Rice. Devastated to hear you are gone. May you be greeted by every animal you ever loved on the other side and may green finch and linnet birds sing you to your rest,” Caine wrote in reference to the song “Green Finch & Linnet Bird,” performed by Johanna in Sweeney Todd.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Born in March 1955 in Okinawa, Japan, where her father was stationed while serving in the U.S. Air Force, Rice was raised in Arizona. According to her website, at the age of 18, Rice “arrived in NYC with $100, two cats, and a piano” to pursue her stage career. After originating the role Marianne in Hang On to Your Ribbons, an off-off Broadway musical adaptation of The Miser, the actress was cast as Luisa in The Fantasticks at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, a role she would play on and off for several years. She also performed in productions of A Little Night Music, Candide, The Tempest, and The Sound of Music, and also originated the role of Susan in the New York Theatre Workshop Virginia Woolf musical The Waves.
Rice, however, was perhaps best known for originating the role of Johanna in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Opening on Broadway in 1979, the production marked Rice’s Broadway breakthrough. She received a Theatre World Award for her performance that same year, and in 2022, she revisited “Green Finch & Linnet Bird” at the Sondheim Unplugged concert.
A soprano, Rice also performed with opera companies across the world, including Venice’s Gran Teatro la Fenice, Santa Fe Opera, Central City Opera, and Dallas Opera. In 2010, Rice, a familiar face in New York’s cabaret scene, won a Bistro Award, which was followed by a Mac Award for her solo show in 2011. According to her website, Rice continued to perform and live in NYC “with the same piano” that she played when she first arrived.
