Meow Meow Joins Ramin Karimloo in SWEENEY TODD at Birmingham Rep
The production will be directed by The Rep’s Artistic Director Joe Murphy, and designed by award-winning designer Elin Steele.
By: Stephi Wild Feb. 17, 2026
Sweeney Todd has found its Mrs. Lovett! Actress, dancer, and cabaret performer Meow Meow will star alongside Ramin Karimloo, who takes on the role of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street in a new production of Stephen Sondheim's music at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in the UK.
The production will be directed by The Rep’s Artistic Director Joe Murphy, and designed by award-winning designer Elin Steele. Performances run 4 July – 9 August.
Sweeney Todd features music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, with a book by Hugh Wheeler, from an adaptation by Christopher Bond.
On joining the cast, Meow Meow said: “I can’t wait to hurl myself into the dubious deliciousness and dangerous world of Sweeney Todd with Joe Murphy, Ramin Karimloo and the gang at Birmingham Rep. Heady days ahead!”
The Rep’s Artistic Director and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Director, Joe Murphy added: “We are absolutely delighted to welcome Meow to the cast. Mrs. Lovett demands a performer with impeccable comic timing, musical command, and a taste for the macabre — and she delivers all of that in spades. Her genius brings a thrilling theatrical edge to Sweeney Todd and our audiences are in for something truly special.”
Further casting and full creative team will be announced in the coming weeks.
About Sweeney Todd
Wrongfully imprisoned for 15 years, Benjamin Barker returns to Victorian London as the mysterious barber, Sweeney Todd. Upon finding out he’s lost everything he ever loved, Sweeney swears revenge and so begins a chilling tale of murder, macabre and Mrs Lovett’s pies!
First performed on Broadway in 1979, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler‘s 12-time Tony Award-winning masterpiece is considered one of the greatest musicals ever written.
A razor-sharp story of retribution, this darkly comic and dramatic musical is a must-see in this new version by Rep Artistic Director, Joe Murphy.
About Meow Meow
Meow Meow’s unique brand of subversive and sublime entertainment has hypnotized, inspired and seduced audiences worldwide from London’s West End to Carnegie Hall, to the Hollywood Bowl, to the Sydney Opera House. Her original music theatre works have played from Berlin to Berkeley, to Edinburgh to Shanghai and have been presented by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov amongst others.
The stage-diving tragi-comedienne has performed her solo “orchestrated chaos” with The London Philharmonic, Sydney, Melbourne, Seattle, Bergen Norway, Oregon, Vancouver and San Francisco Symphonies amongst others and she is a frequent guest and collaborator with the “little orchestra” Pink Martini including at the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Albert Hall London and with the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall and at Hollywood Bowl. With symphonies she often specialises in Weimar and French chanson repertoire as well as jump-cut explorations of Schubert and Schumann and contemporary and original work.
Her latest album Hotel Amour with Pink Martini’s Thomas Lauderdale was ranked in the Times UK top 100 albums of 2019.
Meow Meow’s theatre credits include Titania (Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe), Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls (Royal Philharmonic at Royal Albert Hall), La Maîtresse – a role created for her in Michel Legrand and Kneehigh’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on London’s West End, Jenny in Die Dreigroschen Oper (with the London Philharmonic in London and Paris), and Anna 1 and 2 in Die Sieben Todsünden at the Berlin Konzerthaus under Vladimir Jurowski, and at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall with Orchestra Victoria, Victorian Opera, and in San Francisco under Edwin Outwater. She has performed as “Pegleg” in Tom Waits’ The Black Rider with Orchestra Victoria, Sitwell/Walton’s Facade at Berlin Konzerthaus, cond Jurowski and Louis Andriessen’s de Materie at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her work also includes the narration of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale for Melbourne Symphony and she curated their orchestral programme: The 20’s And All That Dissonance. She has been presented by Renée Fleming at the Kennedy Center, DC. Meow Meow is the recipient of numerous international theatre and performance awards and in 2025 was made a Fellow of New York University’s Center for Ballet.
She has made numerous award-winning original music-theatre works which have been presented at Southbank Centre London, Sydney Opera House, UK tours and Edinburgh International Festival, including Vamp, Meow’ s Little Match Girl, Meow’s Little Mermaid. She has created numerous “fantastical history” song cycles for crumbling theatres in Australia and the UK, and bespoke civic events – for instance in Liverpool UK for the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album involving the city’s brass bands, a three day “riot” and a requiem in a graveyard. Her recent music theatre work Apocalypse Meow was presented at Southbank Centre London, had a return season at Shakespeare’s Globe London, Malthouse Theatre Melbourne and at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in NYC. In 2024 she also collaborated with choreographer/director Arthur Pita, Olivier-Award winning former Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson MBE, composer Frank Moon and Oxford Kafka Research Programme to perform Kafka’s A Hunger Artist, commissioned by Oxford Cultural Programme and the Royal Ballet.
Meow Meow has toured the concert halls of Australia, the UK and the US with The Australian Chamber Orchestra and Barry Humphries’ acclaimed Weimar programme, including an extended return season at the Barbican in London. She is guest artist with Pina Bausch Tanztheater in Todsünden/Songs since 2008, and has just had her Carnegie Hall solo debut with her programme: “Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disruptors : the Wild Women of the Weimar Republic”. Her most recent UK performance was an extensive season of her new show “It’s come to this” at Soho Theatre London,and she has just completed a new work “Meow Meow’s Red Shoes”, the third in her HC Andersen trilogy, with director Kate Champion of DV8 and Force Majeure companies, commissioned by Belvoir St Theatre, Malthouse Theatre, BLACK SWAN State Theatre Company. It is currently nominated for 6 Green Room Awards including Best New Production and Best Performer.
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