For Gaten Matarazzo, Things Couldn’t Get Much Stranger Than A Smash Broadway Show, Ecstatic Reviews And Getting The Last, Bloody Laugh In ‘Sweeney Todd’ – Deadline Q&A
deadline.comAt 20 years old, Gaten Matarazzo is already something of a Broadway veteran. The New Jersey native was only 9 when he made his debut in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, a few years older when he appeared in Les Misérables and then, just last year, took over the role of “Jared Kleinman” in the final Broadway cast of the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen.
Still, even theatergoers who had followed his career from the beginning couldn’t help but be caught off guard by his performance in Tony Award–winning director Thomas Kail’s current revival of the Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler dark, funny and musically lush classic Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
As the young orphan Tobias, Matarazzo is on stage for about 25 minutes of the musical’s just-shy-of-three-hour running time, and even alongside Broadway heavyweights Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, the Stranger Things star more than holds his own.
Within those 25 minutes, Matarazzo performs one of Sondheim’s most beloved songs, “Not While I’m Around,” the tender ballad of devotion – this in a musical not exactly known for tenderness or devotion.
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