Sarah Rice, who carried out the pivotal position of the endangered Johanna within the unique Broadway manufacturing of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Avenue, died Saturday of most cancers. She was 68.
Her demise was introduced in an Instagram put up by her buddy and fellow performer Rebecca Caine, who remembered Rice for her love of animals. “Might you be greeted by each animal you ever beloved on the opposite aspect and should inexperienced finch and linnet birds sing you to your relaxation,” wrote Caine, referring to the Sweeney quantity “Inexperienced Finch & Linnet Fowl” carried out by the Johanna character.
Rice, whose Sweeney position in 1979 was her first and solely Broadway efficiency, revisited her signature tune simply two years in the past on the Sondheim Unplugged live performance staged at New York’s 54 Under.
Born March 5, 1955, in Okinawa, Japan, the place her father was stationed whereas serving within the U.S. Air Pressure, Rice was raised in Arizona and moved to New York at age 18 to pursue a stage profession. Rice would later write that she “arrived in NYC with $100, two cats, and a piano.”
Previous to her Broadway breakthrough in 1979, Rice originated the position of Marianne in Hold On to Your Ribbons Off Off Broadway after which stepped into the long-running Off Broadway musical of The Fantasticks as The Woman. Throughout that period she additionally carried out in productions of A Little Evening Music, Candide, The Tempest and The Sound of Music. She originated the position of Susan within the New York Theatre Workshop Virginia Woolf musical The Waves.
Authentic ‘Sweeney Todd’ stars Sarah Rice and Len Cariou at “Broadway And The Bard” in 2016
John Lamparski/Getty Photos
A soprano, Rice additionally carried out with such opera firms as Italy’s Gran Teatro la Fenice in Venice, the Santa Fe Opera, Central Metropolis Opera, Dallas Opera and others.
Rice was lengthy a well-known presence in New York’s cabaret scene, successful a 2010 Bistro Award and 2011 Mac Award for her solo present. She was additionally a famous participant of the Theremin and was invited to carry out the “otherwordly” sounds, as she put it, on the Caramoor Music Competition.
A longtime resident of New York Metropolis, Rice famous on her web site that she continued to dwell in her adopted hometown “with the identical piano” that she performed when she first arrived, and he or she at all times supplied a house to beloved cats.
Rice was married to her producer John Hiller, however full survivor data was not instantly accessible.
