George Hearn (born June 18, 1934) is an American actor and singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Hearn studied philosophy at Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College before he embarked on a career in the theater, training for the stage with actress turned acting coach Irene Dailey. Most of Hearn's early performances were in traditional productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival and theaters at Lincoln Center.

Hearn's career began in 1963 when he played Sir Dinidan in a national tour of Camelot with Biff McGuire and Jeannie Carson, standing by for McGuire, who played King Arthur. He first garnered a notice as John Dickinson in the acclaimed 1969 musical 1776 and as Liv Ullmann's leading man in the musical version of I Remember Mama (1979).

On March 4, 1980 he replaced Len Cariou in the title role of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opposite Dorothy Loudon. Later in 1980 Hearn and the show's original star, Angela Lansbury, headed the show's touring company, then reprised their roles for a Showtime production of the musical, which won him an Emmy Award for his portrayal.

Michael Cerveris (born November 6, 1960) is an American singer, guitarist and actor. He has performed in many stage musicals and plays, including in several Stephen Sondheim musicals: Assassins, Sweeney Todd, Road Show, and Passion. He won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Assassins.

He was called, by Playbill.com, "arguably the most versatile leading man on Broadway", playing roles from "Shakespeare's Romeo to The Who's Tommy, from the German transsexual rock diva Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch to the homicidal title character of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd."

Cerveris was born in Bethesda, Maryland and raised in Huntington, West Virginia. His mother, Marsha (née Laycock), was a dancer, and his father, Michael Cerveris, was a professor of music; the two met while students at the Juilliard School. He is a 1979 graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and a 1983 cum laude graduate of Yale University, where he studied voice, German lieder and Italian songs.

Cerveris had roles in several Off-Broadway productions, starting with Macbeth in 1983 as Malcolm and including Total Eclipse in 1985 as Rimbaud at the Westside Theatre,Abingdon Square in 1987 as Frank at the Women's Project, and Blood Sports in 1987 as Nick at the New York Theatre Workshop.

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the murderer of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–1847) and he was later introduced as an antihero of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptations. Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by scholars, although there are possible legendary prototypes.

In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair, which makes them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. Just in case they are alive, he goes to the basement and "polishes them off" (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting the throats of his customers before they are dispatched into the basement via the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. In most versions of the story, he and Mrs. Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.

John Scot Barrowman (born March 11, 1967) is a Scottish–American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality. Born in Glasgow, he grew up in Illinois following his family's emigration to the U.S. Encouraged by his high school teachers, Barrowman studied performing arts at the United States International University in San Diego before landing the role of Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London's West End.

Since his debut in professional theatre, Barrowman has played lead roles in various musicals both in the West End and on Broadway, including Miss Saigon, The Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard and Matador. After appearing in Sam Mendes' production of The Fix, he was nominated for the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical and, in the early 2000s, returned to the role of Billy Crocker in the revival of Anything Goes. His most recent West End credit was in the 2009 production of La Cage aux Folles.

Patti Ann LuPone (born April 21, 1949) is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performance as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les Misérables.

LuPone was born in Northport, New York, on Long Island, the daughter of Angela Louise (née Patti), a college library administrator, and Orlando Joseph LuPone, a school administrator. Her great-grand-aunt was the celebrated nineteenth-century opera singer Adelina Patti. Her brother Robert LuPone is an actor, dancer, and director who originated the role of Zach the choreographer in A Chorus Line. Her other brother William LuPone is a teacher. When they were young, they performed on Long Island as the LuPone Trio. She is of Italian/Abruzzese descent and a graduate of Northport High School, where she studied under the musical direction of voice coach Esther Scott.

LuPone was part of the first graduating class of Juilliard's Drama Division (1968-1972: Group 1), which also included actors Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers. She graduated from Juilliard in 1972 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.