Members of the ensemble (Photo by Scott Smeltzer)
Reviewed by Joel Beers
South Coast Repertory
Through Oct. 18
RECOMMENDED
Christian Tyler Dorey (Photo by Scott Smeltzer)
Toss a magic bean anywhere near an American theater these days and there’s a good chance you’ll hit a production of Into the Woods.
It’s the 40th anniversary of Stephen Sondheim’s most commercially successful musical, co-written with James Lapine, and according to Music Theatre International, which licenses the show, more than 300 productions of the full-length musical are scheduled, stretching into 2027.
So, yes, a lot of people are going into the woods.
What keeps drawing them there is that Sondheim and Lapine start by scattering breadcrumbs from stories we’ve known since childhood, then lead us somewhere far darker. They begin with characters and stories embedded for generations in the Western imagination — Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel — then hurl them into the same forest.
Then comes Act II.
That’s when the musical becomes much more than an ingenious collision of fractured fairy tales. Wishes have consequences, parents fail their children, people die, survivors look for someone to blame and the line between heroes and villains gets awfully blurry.
South Coast Repertory’s ravishing new production, directed by Peter Rothstein, understands both sides of the show, embracing the humor and theatrical playfulness of the first act without shortchanging the darker reckoning of the second.
Michael Deni and Cooper Lee Bennett, as Cinderella’s Prince and Rapunzel’s Prince, respectively, milk Agonyfor every drop of preening melodrama, while Hailey Truong’s Little Red Riding Hood is a delight: funny, feisty and projecting both unnerving innocence and more than a hint of malice.
Valerie Perri’s Witch is a commanding presence, first as the grotesque crone who curses the Baker’s family and later, after her transformation, as perhaps the most clear-eyed person in a world seemingly losing its mind.
Perri has the vocal chops Sondheim demands, navigating his rapid-fire lyrics and shifting rhythms without sacrificing character. Stay With Me reveals the frightened mother beneath the controlling parent, while Last Midnight unleashes the Witch’s fury at a group that, like groups everywhere, would much rather find somebody to blame.
Danielle Hope’s Baker’s Wife is another standout, bringing warmth and humor to a woman who loves her husband and wants a family yet discovers that getting what you want doesn’t necessarily leave you satisfied. Her second act encounter with Cinderella’s Prince is funny, sexy and devastating.
But the production is at its best when Rothstein crowds the stage and Sondheim crowds the score. Characters enter and exit, stories collide and converge and Sondheim’s intricate harmonies (backed by Wiley DeWeese’s impeccable music direction) almost become another character, one with a lot to say and no particular interest in waiting its turn.
Adam Koch’s scenic design avoids giving us Storybook Forest 101. Instead of literal trees, long strips of material hang from above; characters weave between them, disappear and re-emerge. The forest feels less like a physical location than a realm where ordinary rules no longer apply.
That’s especially effective with the arrival of the Giantess. Rothstein resists rolling out some enormous puppet or other visual device. Instead, she is a disembodied presence, conjured through Greg Emetaz’s projections, Noel Nichols/UptownWorks’s sound design and Amanda Naughton’s booming voice. We catch fleeting glimpses of her gargantuan frame, which makes her more menacing; sometimes the monster feared is more frightening than the monster revealed.
Eventually, the survivors decide that if they’re going to make it out of the woods, they’re going to have to do it together. The intricate musical layering that earlier generated comic energy now carries grief, uncertainty and hard-earned community.
Forty years after the musical premiered, what feels revelatory about this production is just how contemporary Into the Woods remains. A show that opened on Broadway in 1987 at the height of the AIDS crisis, and was widely read at the time through the lens of that devastation, now finds a different kind of resonance in a politically fractured country.
That gives two of its final numbers, No One Is Alone and Children Will Listen, enormous emotional weight. The first offers reassurance in the face of grief, but also something more demanding: responsibility. What we do affects people beyond ourselves, whether we intend or not.
Children Will Listen goes even further. Children absorb not only what adults tell them but how they behave, what they fear, where they place blame and how they treat people who disagree with them.
In a political climate marked by division, distrust and steamrolling rhetoric that weaponizes fear, blame and grievance over empathy and dialogue, children are watching how adults behave. And learning from them.
Fairy tales traditionally end with happily ever after. Sondheim and Lapine are interested in what happens the morning after that, when the wish has been granted, the wedding is over and everybody must figure out how to live with what comes next.SCR’s production finds both exhilaration and the ache in that journey. Its woods are seductive but treacherous, confusing and unpredictable. It’s a place where wishes are pursued, illusions are shattered and getting what you want might just be the beginning of your problems.
Much like the world waiting outside the theater.
South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa. Tues-Wed., 7 pm, Thurs.-Fri., 7:30 pm, Sat., 2 & 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm. www.scr.org. Runtime: approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with an intermission
