Into the Woods
Writers: Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine
Director: Eamon Flack
Belvoir Street Theatre
March 18 to April 30, 2023
Belvoir’s production of the musical Into the Woods is brilliantly cast, cleverly staged and superbly entertaining. A tangled tale of sparkling wit and bitter-sweet reflection shaping a new story for the present by mixing and interconnecting folk wisdom from the past, it inspires both personal and collective questioning about which path we take out of the woods.
First produced in 1987, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, adapted for film in 2014, and with many stage revivals, it might seem to pose insurmountable problems for Belvoir’s small upstairs theatre. However, the minimalist setting (Michael Hankin) – two black pianos on a dais with top-hatted pianists (Simon Holt, Ann-Maree McDonald) and backdrop ruched curtains – creates a strikingly disjunctive space for a “once upon a fairy tale” narrative. The evening-suited, impartial narrator (Peter Carroll) further evokes the 1966 Cabaret and its relevance emerges following the interval.
The lively and witty opening number best called “I wish” draws together the major characters through their mutual yearning for something beyond their circumstances. Their longing has its most potent expression in the baker (Justin Smith) and his wife (Esther Hannaford) who wish for a child although the baker inherits a curse placed upon his father by their unneighbourly greens fanatic, the wily witch (Tamsin Carroll).
The exploited domestic Cinderella, sad Jack (Marty Alex) and his whiney mother (Lena Cruz), a greedy Little Red Riding Hood (Mo Lovegrove) all confide their desires, and there is yet one to come, the sad child taken from the bakers’ parents by the witch as reparation. Enclosed in a tower – imaginatively evoked through her costume – by her possessive abductor “mother”, Rapunzel’s (Stefanie Caccamo) lonely lament haunts the woods into which all the characters will be drawn in pursuit of their desires.
Once in the woods, each character – including two very amusingly competitive Prince Charmings (Tim Draxl), (Andrew Coshan) in search of their perfect love – must undergo an ordeal. The baker and his wife face the most complex task as they must collect ingredients for a potion demanded by the witch which will remove a curse placed on her by her mother. Their efforts provide some good old-fashioned stage comedy ingeniously interconnecting all the characters. The most entertaining of the ordeals is Little Red’s meeting with the wicked wolverine (also Draxl) – and his later grandmotherly fashion statement – who invites us “to feel how enjoyable it is to be talking with your meal”. The ordeal with most repercussions for the second act, is that of Jack and those deceptive beans.
What is most appealing about the Belvoir production – the cleverness of the Sondheim rhymes is unsurpassable – is the casting, which is so beautifully appropriate. There could not be a more malevolently stunning witch, a ditherier baker, a more evilly suggestive wolf, a more tender Cinderella (Shubshri Kandiah) in communion with her birds, a more resilient Little Red, a more unworldly Jack, or a sadder Rapunzel. And their singing is tremendous, and the stand-out, the most moving Moments in the Woods, delivered by Hannaford.
Into the Woods needs a second sitting as it is impossible to appreciate either the excellence of the production or complex layering of the narrative on a first visit. There are many themes explored from misused power of parenthood to the wrong-headed belief that the individual’s right to the pursuit of happiness is the mainspring of social well-being. There are deeper levels yet and theatre-goers might be prompted to search for them by reading the real Brothers Grimm instead of the pap served up in the movies.
