MAT auditioning for 'Sweeney Todd'

Montana’s Actors’ Theatre is looking for some actors to perform supporting roles in a dark, musical melodrama with roots going back to the mid-1800s.

MAT is holding auditions for “Sweeney Todd” with auditions for main supporting roles at 7 p.m. Monday, May 21, and auditions for the supporting chorus 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 22 in the Little Theatre in Montana State University-Northern’s Cowan Hall.

MAT announced in a release about the auditions that due to the complex nature of the musical, the main roles, of Todd and Mrs. Lovett, have been precast.

The dark tale has been adapted and put on stage since the character Sweeney Todd first appeared in British penny dreadful Victorian popular fiction in 1846-47. The story of the macabre barber was told in Christopher Bond’s 1973 novel “Sweeney Todd,” which Stephen Sondheim used as a source for his 1979 musical that opened on Broadway that year starring Len Cariou as Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, with its original production earning eight Tony’s and being nominated for another, and its London production the next year as well as numerous revivals earning many more awards.

The play was adapted into a movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, released in 2007.

It tells the story of a man unjustly sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony who returns to London to seek revenge on the lecherous judge and ends up working with the owner of a failing meat pie shop above which he starts his barber shop — from which he gives new ingredients to Mrs. Lovett.

The May 21 audition is for 10 roles for men and women and one boy age 12 to 18. The troupe is seeking experienced singers able to maintain harmonies and sing a 2.5-octave range.

The audition May 22 will be for a chorus of singers to support the cast.

MAT encourages people who are interested in a role to contact Grant Olson at [email protected] or via a Facebook private message to discuss preparations for the auditions.