Into the Woods at the Delacorte Theater
Shakespeare in the Park, veering slightly from the path of
the Bard, has chosen to honor an ingenious work by James Lapine and Stephen
Sondheim: an unstoppable collision between the fairy tales of the Brothers
Grimm. Yes, Sondheim’s ode to the child, Into the Woods, is playing in the
relative woods of Central Park through September 1st, and, in a
production so utterly satisfying as to draw a simultaneous sigh from its
audience, it continues to dominate in its position as the superior fantasy
musical—better than anything by Disney, Barrie, or (shudder) Weber.
This Into the Woods boasts the talents of
bright but unimposing Academy Award nominee Amy Adams as the Baker’s Wife, Donna
Murphy as the Witch, and the voice of Glenn Close giving life to a marvelously
built Giantess. These and an all-star
cast of theater legends (including a few actors from Into the Woods’ original cast) participate generously and with all
of their considerable talent in the surprisingly engaging if complicated
storyline. The Baker (Dennis O’Hare) and
his Wife are childless thanks to a curse placed on their house by their
next-door neighbor, a hunched and ugly Witch.
Turns out the Baker’s father (Chip Zien, the Baker in the original 1986 production) stole a bit more than was good
for him from the Witch’s garden, including several magic beans, which the
Witch’s mother had warned her never to let leave the garden. When the beans were stolen, the Witch was
cursed into ugliness. In exchange for
lifting the curse (the curse on the Baker, not on the Witch), the Witch instructs the Baker to collect four items for a
potion which would cure her—the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood,
the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold. (You with me so far?) So begins a whirlwind adventure that brings
the Baker and his Wife face to face with all the folktale heroes and heroines
that we—and presumably Sondheim and Lapine—grew up with. A few even take the spotlight for a while for
entertaining star turns. Sarah Stiles is
a fantastically brash Little Red Riding Hood, facing off against a wolf who
feels uncomfortably like a very hungry pedophile, and Ivan Hernandez and Paris
Remillard are hysterical self-centered princes whose respective loves are
bestowed to—depending on the time of day—Cinderella (Jessie Mueller), Rapunzel
(Tess Soltau), Snow White (Victoria Cook), and Sleeping Beauty (also Soltau). Such is the life of a prince, evidently.
This
production is staged so ingeniously (by director Timothy Sheader and scenic
designers John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour), that one truly descends into the
woods during its course, in a significantly different way than in July’s
production of As You Like It. In that play, the forest seemed nearly
interchangeable with the fortress where Duke Frederick ruled. Certainly, one duke was evil and the other
good, but the antics in each situation were much the same, and the movements of
the set, though beautiful, did little to further the plot. Here the set stays immobile, and yet the
cottage home of the Baker and his Wife seems a world apart from the wood. When the story, told by a young and
frightened narrator alone in the woods himself, begins, we feel a change. Excitement?
Fear? It could be either, but
then that’s the point. In this journey
through the tales that have done their part to make us who we are—to teach us
morals, kindness, not to talk to strangers or to stray from the path—Sondheim and
Lapine wish to bring us back to childhood, and to learn what it is to be a
child and what it is to leave that state forever. “Be careful what you say,” sings the Witch in
the closing number, “Children will listen.”
Well, whatever they listen to, the music of Into the Woods would be a welcome addition.
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