Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton Set for New West End Production of SWEENEY TODD, 2011

In big news from the U.K. today, Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton have teamed up to star in a new production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at the Chichester Festival Theatre, prior to leading the show to the West End, according to a report from Baz Bamigboye in the U.K.'s Daily Mail.

The production will launch in the spring of 2011, the delay due to the stars' busy schedules, and will be directed by Jonathan Kent. 

Staunton recently worked on Cranford Christmas, appeared in a small role in Mike Leigh's new film and has other projects already contracted through to the end of next year. Ball is appearing in concert engagements and starring in Hairspray on tour through this year, where he is reportedly making more than £30,000 a week as star and co-producer.

According to Bamigboye in the Daily Mail, Kent has spent months recruiting the actors: Ball to play the demon barber of Fleet Street, of course, with Staunton in the role of Mrs. Lovett, who turns the barber's victims into pies.

Ball is no stranger to Sonheim.  He appeared in the London premiere of Sondheim's musical Passion with Maria Friedman (on the Donmar's schedule next year in honor of Sondheim's 80th birthday celebration, as previously reported) and he has professionally recorded Not While I'm Around from Sweeney Todd (the number is actually sung by Mrs Lovett in the show).

Michael Ball is an Olivier Award winning actor, singer, and radio and TV presenter who is best known for the song "Love Changes Everything" and musical theatre roles such as Marius in Les Misérables, Alex in Aspects of Love, Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Edna Turnblad in Hairspray for which he won the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for best actor in a musical.

Staunton trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and in  English repertory. She played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz for the Royal Shakespeare Company and  has received Olivier Awards for A Chorus of Disapproval, The Corn Is Green, and for Into the Woods. She was nominated for her performance as Miss Adelaide in the 1996 revival of Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre. More recently, she appeared in the premiere of Frank McGuinness's There Came a Gypsy Riding at the Almeida in 2007 and opened in 2009 in Entertaining Mr Sloane alongside Mathew Horne at the Trafalgar Studios. On screen she has appeared on television in Up the Garden Path and the films Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Vera Drake.