This is the fourth iteration of Into the Woods I’ve seen over the years (I missed the City Center concert from which the current revival stems) and I’m here to tell you the surprise and delight of the original Broadway production with all its bells and whistles is matched in this infectiously joyful, stripped down (production not content) version. It’s as if the splendid cogs of a Swiss watch sang as they kept perfect time. Everything works. Though iconoclastic darkness remains, oh how you’ll laugh!
Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine’s clever, overlapping amalgam of Perrault and Grimm fairy tales creeps up on one beginning as it does with the path to happily ever after. We start with three stories:
Cinderella (Phillipa Soo) longs to go to the festival (ball). Her wicked (here wickedly funny) stepmother (Nancy Opel) and trashy stepsisters (Ta’Nika Gibson and Brooke Ishibashi) mock and confine her. A baker (tonight Jason Forbach) and his wife (singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles) ache for a baby, but because of his father, he’s been cursed childless by the witch (Patina Miller) next door. She promises absolution and offspring if the couple secure “a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold.” The inept baker finds a pocket full of beans in one of his father’s old jackets and sets out, his smarter, more capable wife secretly following.
Jack (tonight Alex Joseph Grayson) and his mother (Aymee Garcia) are starving. She sends him to market to sell his best friend, Milky White, a sad-eyed, thoroughly sympathetic cow (a spectacular puppet and Kennedy Kanagawa) for money to eat. He winds up exchanging the beast for 5 of the baker’s 6 beans (don’t forget the other bean) with the understanding he can buy back the cow. Meanwhile, Little Red Ridinghood (tonight Delphi Borich) encounters the wolf (Gavin Creel) on the way to Granny’s (Annie Golden) house. We know what happens there.
Add the witch’s tower-imprisoned daughter (the baker’s sister) Rapunzel (Alysia Velez- lovely voice), her prince (Joshua Henry), Cinderella’s prince (Gavin Creel) a mysterious old man who keeps popping up in the wood to provoke and help the baker (David Patrick Kelly, also the narrator), and a giant or two. The patchwork stitches together neatly. Act two reveals what happens AFTER happily ever after when careful-what-you-wish-for takes over. Body count is high; lessons are learned. It’s not a pretty picture. A testament to the show that’s 2 hours forty (with intermission), you may feel stiff when you rise but won’t regret the time.
Casting is simply wonderful. As the Baker’s Wife, Sara Bareilles is a cornucopia of nuanced expression and gesture. We take the journey with her from tenderness to frustration to flummoxed surprise. Phillipa Soo’s enchanting soprano serves an adroitly underwhelmed Cinderella. Her repeated pratfall down palace steps deserves an award.
David Patrick Kelly offers a deft, understated performance as narrator and just the right pixilated persona (physically as well as aurally) as the Mysterious Man. Joshua Henry, who rarely gets to exhibit comedy chops, revels in a terrific portrayal of Rapunzel’s pompous prince- as do we.
Gavin Creel may never have had a better time on stage. His wolf is sly, seductive, balletic, droll and cool. Who can resist? The character lightly marks his territory salivating with anticipation. At one point he surreptitiously salts the girl’s arm. As Cinderella’s prince, Creel combines the self-righteousness of Dudley Do-Right with magisterial grandiosity. Posing is perfection.
Only Patina Miller’s Witch feels wrong. The artist doesn’t enunciate well enough to deliver Sondheim lyrics and slightly lags. Her interpretation of the moot villain loses its humor. While primal motherhood and rage comes across- “After Midnight” especially resonates- simultaneous chewing of scenery diminishes its effect.
Due to the vicissitudes of COVID, I see three understudies, none of whom are ill equipped. Jason Forbach credibly steps into the role of the Baker with the character’s stubborn, half baked approach to situations and touching sorrow. Delphi Borich’s Little Red Ridinghood showcases wry often petulant comic timing. As Jack, Alex Joseph Grayson skillfully manifests naivete and pluck. His affection for Milky White is palpable.
Director Lear DeBessonet has created a captivating revival farce full of successively great moments, a thru-line with irresistible momentum. Timing, movement, expression, and use of the limited staging area are superb. The audience erupts after every number- and they’re sincere. This is, of course, partly in admiration of the recently deceased Sondheim. What it’s not is the increasingly frequent adulation of those who pay so much for a ticket they assume the piece has to be “that good.”
David Rockwell’s minimal set consists of floor to upper wing birch trees deftly lit for mood by Tyler Micoleau. Three dolls houses float above the initial tri-story set up. Aborted growth of a beanstalk (remember the extra bean?) as Act I curtain comes down is, however, lost.
Andrea Hood’s costumes look parody cheap fitting a lighthearted putting-a-show-on-in-the-barn feel. Keeping to a period wardrobe would, however, have been more cohesive (stepsisters and witch) Her princes and wolf are splendid.
The symbiotic creativity of puppet designer James Ortiz (cow, hen, giantess) with actor/manipulator Kennedy Kanagawa (whose own facial expressions coincided with that of his characters) is something to behold and remember.
Rob Berman’s Encores! Orchestra, on stage, offers expert undercarriage.
The show is a joy.
Photos by Matthew Murphy/Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
New York City Center Encores Production of
Into the Woods
Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by James Lapine
Directed by Lear DeBessonet
Music Direction- Rob Berman Choreography- Lorin Latarro
St. James Theatre 246 Wesr 44th Street
Through August 21, 2022
