Sarah Rice Dies: Original Johanna In Broadway’s First ‘Sweeney Todd’ Was 68
deadline.comSarah Rice, who performed the pivotal role of the endangered Johanna in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, died Saturday of cancer.
She was 68. Her death was announced in an Instagram post by her friend and fellow performer Rebecca Caine, who remembered Rice for her love of animals. “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,” wrote Caine, referring to the Sweeney number “Green Finch & Linnet Bird” performed by the Johanna character.
Rice, whose Sweeney role in 1979 was her first and only Broadway performance, revisited her signature song just two years ago at the Sondheim Unplugged concert staged at New York’s 54 Below.
Born March 5, 1955, in Okinawa, Japan, where her father was stationed while serving in the U.S. Air Force, Rice was raised in Arizona and moved to New York at age 18 to pursue a stage career.
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