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music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine, directed by Peter Hinton

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

June 3-Oct 30, 2005

“A Magical Production”

The Stratford Festival’s first foray into Stephen Sondheim is his 1987 musical “Into the Woods”.  The production is spectacular.  No musical has been staged at the Avon Theatre with so much imagination since the Susan Benson/Brian MacDonald Gilbert and Sullivan operettas of the 1980s.  Unlike those operettas, however, “Into the Woods” is a flawed work.  Its first act is really a perfect 90-minute musical unto itself.  Its seemingly unnecessary second act is an hour of heavy-handed moralism that tries to relate fairy tales to the adult world.  Nevertheless, the production is so imaginative and the performances so strong they compensate for the second act’s downturn in mood and interest.

In Act 1 James Lapine, writer of the book, ingeniously weaves together the stories of “Jack and the Beanstalk”, “Cinderella”, “Little Red Ridinghood” and “Rapunzel” by means of the story of a Baker and his Wife.  A Witch, Rapunzel’s mother, has placed a curse on the couple that they can remove only by gathering four objects--a cow, a golden slipper, a red cape and a piece of corn-yellow hair.  Thus the quest of the Baker and his Wife is linked with the quests of the other characters as they all go “into the woods” to fulfill their various wishes.  Lapine and Sondheim conclude this act so cleverly that but for the Narrator’s statement “To be continued” one would think the musical were over.

Unluckily, it is not.  Lapine and Sondheim could not still the urge to show what happens after the fairy tales’ “happily ever after”.  The world is plagued by a giantess, the widow of the giant Jack killed, who seeks vengeance.  Many characters one cared for are killed without warning.  Rapunzel’s Prince and Cinderella’s Prince do not remain faithful but seek new conquests, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty respectively.  The conclusion is a kind of Camusian existentialism that we must all band together to help fight the meaningless that threatens us as individuals.  It’s an ambitious project to be sure, but misguided.  The fairy tale characters of Act 1 have confronted some fairly dire obstacles already--curses, imprisonment, blindness, giants, being eaten.  The anomie that faces them in Act 2 is not so nearly as dramatic a threat and is made overtly moralistic in contrast to the action of Act 1.  Yet, at the same time, it is Act 2 that contains the show’s most memorable music, notably the moral of the story, “No One is Alone”.

What is most striking about the show is its design.  Dany Lyne has relocated the setting from Europe to Canada, setting Act 1 in fall and Act 2 in winter after an ice storm.  Then she has filtered this landscape through such visual references as silent film and the paintings of René Magritte.  The result are modernistic clean lines that are fantastical as well--with square-trunked trees, a flat-sided plastic cow, suitcases shaped like houses and Rapuzel’s imprisoning tower as her own dress.  The black-and-white characters become increasingly involved with colour in the woods--the bright blue Wolf, the red of blood and the golden glint of money.  Lyne achieves so much through conventional theatric means that the addition of video projection is unnecessary and out of keeping with the rest.

The cast is one of the strongest Stratford has assembled for a musical.  Bruce Dow as the Baker and Mary Ellen Mahoney as the Baker’s Wife have the widest range to display from farcical humour to grief and remorse.  They are both superb.  They sing with feeling and deliver their lines with spot-on timing.  Their performance of “It Takes Two” and Mahoney’s performance of “Moments in the Woods” are the most poignant in the evening. Susan Gilmour as the Witch sports one of the wildest costumes ever seen at Stratford, an entire vegetable garden come to life.  Due partly to the costume’s face mask and to the too husky voice she puts on as the Witch, many of Sondheim’s intricate lyrics are lost.  When, however, the Witch is returned to her human form, and Gilmour is freed from the costume, her voice becomes true and clear and so does her diction which only helps to cause shivers during her singing of “Last Midnight”.       

Dayna Tekatch captures the skepticism that pervades Sondheim’s unusually doubt-filled Cinderella, unfazed by wealth as much as by poverty.  Barbara Fulton is a delight as Jack’s frustrated Mother, here given a comic Newfoundland accent, while the lanky Kyle Blair is an excellent Jack, showing there are few steps between being a blockhead and an adventurer.  He brings a real sense of wonder to his big number “Giants in the Sky”.            

Jennifer Waiser’s unusual little-girl voice is well-suited to Little Red Ridinghood just as Amy Walsh’s operatic soprano is to Rapunzel.  Thom Allison is frightening as the lecherous Wolf and appropriately smarmy as Cinderella’s Prince, who is all charm and nothing else.  One wishes Lyne had given the Wolf a half-mask, not a full-head mask, so we could see Allison’s expression.  Laird Mackintosh is very funny as Rapunzel’s besotted Prince.  Peter Donaldson lurks about the stage as the Narrator/Mysterious Man adding a sense of pleasant menace to his lines.  One is sorry when the characters in Act 2 decide in a fit of Lapine’s postmodernism to kick him out and go it alone.                  

Peter Hinton’s direction is as crisp and precise as Dany Lyne’s designs.  He gives so much detail to the characters as fairy tale beings in Act 1 that it obviates the script’s attempt to make them more “real” in Act 2.  He stages a number a spectacular effects, most notably the Wolf’s devouring of Little Red Ridinghood’s Grandmother and herself and their subsequent rescue amid a flurry of flying red flecks as the Baker’s cuts open the beast’s belly.  Robert Thomson’s lighting is equally imaginative creating such scenes as the moon seen through scudding clouds or the stage bathed in red against a bright blue background.  Jim Neil’s sound design is especially effective in Act 2 where the crashing of the Giantess through branches and the thuds of her steps are made distressingly real.     

Stratford has billed “Into the Woods” as part of its “Family Experience” even through Sondheim and Lapine clearly intend the show for adults not children.  Parents with small children could leave well satisfied after Act 1 though they will miss some of the show’s best music.  The anger, adult angst and sudden deaths of Act 2 only made the remaining small children I saw bored and fidgety. 

Despite this, Stratford’s “Into the Woods” is a major achievement.  If theatre in Canada were set up as it is in Britain, the logical step for this exceptionally fine production after closing in Stratford would be to transfer to a theatre in Toronto for even longer run.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Dayna Tekatch and Thom Allison.