"Into the Woods" is a brilliant musical. Possibly one of the top five best of all time. But it is a show that I, and many others, believe will never have a cast top the original. That's ok. It's still very much enjoyable with different performers. But with the original, it's as if you're watching living, breathing people...not actors playing characters. The humor, incredibly important to the show, was crafted on them, the character's voices, in some instances, written for them. There are some lines that will just never land the same way.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
For anyone unfamiliar, "Into the Woods" is one of the great Sondheim Lapine collaborations. The first act follows various well known fairy tale characters (Cinderella, Jack, Little Red) and two "new" ones (The Baker and The Baker's Wife, who long to have a child) whose lives intersect as they must all go, literally, into the woods, to get their wishes. The first act ends with their "happily ever after". But in the second act they are forced to go back into the woods to deal with the consequences of how they got their happy endings in the first place. If you're a fan of "Once Upon a Time", "Fable" or any entities that involve fairy tales interconnecting and taking on the darker aspects of the stories we know and love, you have "Into the Woods" to thank. It came first and pretty much invented the concept. Oh, yeah... and it did it better than anything else.
This "Into the Woods" is darker than other productions. True to this revival's British roots there is DANGER and MAGIC in these woods. This is clearly a production grown out of a cultural understanding that faeries can be dangerous tricksters as well as gift-givers. It's a sensibility that is absent from much American homespun fantasy. In the states there is much talk of "chosen ones" and "destiny" and happy endings. British folklore knows that, if there is a happy ending, it's come with a lot of pain, blood and death. This "Into the Woods" is kissing cousins with the brilliant 2025 film "The Ugly Stepsister". Not so much that it starts dipping into actual horror (this isn't an "adults only" interpretation, though maybe leave the young children at home), but enough that it is rooted in a distinct sensibility that makes the piece feel new and different in an intriguing way. This is an "Into the Woods" with a lot of stage blood and an almost "Shockheaded Peter" sensibility. Director Jordan Fein is so, SO smart.
When Cinderella visits the grave of her mother, her mother does not appear in a sort of beautiful, etherial "fairy godmother" way. Here we simply hear her voice...or rather an enchanted representation of her voice in literal harmony with itself. Maybe Cinderella really sees her, maybe she doesn't. But here the voice's warning that: "good fortune, like bad, can come when least expected" isn't an exciting promise. It's a warning. Take the moment while you can and get out of there. Who knows how long until the magical voice turns dangerous. This is epitomized in the way the presence of the Giant is evoked in act 2 (major props to video designer Roland Horvath). It's as if the spirit of the woods itself is rising up against the characters, and this time it has most definitely turned deadly.
Some of the humor is lost (well, let's be honest, MOST of the humor is lost), but honestly it is in most productions. The difference here is there's something to fill the void. Every character in this production is a LITTLE dangerous...and lines that aren't landing as humorously as they can here become almost veiled threats - what are people's real motives? How deep does their "nice" veneer actually go? When will the darkness not just come out of the woods, but out of each person? I have never been more keenly aware of the dangerous distance between "nice" and "good" (a comparison that shows up multiple times in the piece) than in this production. In this world you'd better be careful before stepping into the woods - not just because of the dangers lurking there, but because it's very easy to miscalculate the very fine line between being a hero or a villain, and there's quite a different ending waiting for you if you get it wrong. After all, how different is it, really, when the Stepmother cuts off parts of her daughter's feet so they might get their happy ending, and the Baker viciously murdering a creature he finds sleeping in a house just so he can get a cape to get HIS happy ending?
"Hello Little Girl" here is played like a scene out of "In the Company of Wolves" with Little Red hearing much of what the Wolf is singing...and being rather flattered and a bit turned on by it. Indeed, the Baker coming after Little Red's cape feels more like a set up for an assault than the interaction between Red and the Wolf. Milky White is a giant "stuffy" puppet that, when sold to the Baker becomes almost a metaphor for Jack selling his childhood... and the nature of the puppet causes the Baker to hold it as if he's holding a child he doesn't quite know what to do with...beautiful foreshadowing for what's to come in the second act. And that same Baker, whose fatal flaw is insecurity and an inability to act forcefully (played here as a dangerous trait in it's own right) is still a LITTLE too comfortable pulling out a knife and ripping a living creature to shreds to get a cloak from it's stomach. This was the first time I was keenly aware that his killing the wolf has nothing to do with trying to save Little Red - it's purely a selfish action- to get her cape now that she's allegedly dead.
The show is fast-paced in a great way. It moves briskly from one set piece to another.
The center of the show is the Baker and the Baker's Wife, though, due to the fact that the Baker's Wife tragically leaves him "half way through the wood", the true center on which the show turns is the Baker. Jamie Parker, now well established for brilliantly inhabiting good hearted but befuddled fathers (Harry in Cursed Child, Dan in the incredible West End revival of Next to Normal which, I think, somehow managed to be better than the original) brings a unique "everyman" quality to the Baker. The original Baker, the incomparable Chip Zien, was grounded, kind and capable, if a bit out of his depth. He had to learn about the need for community, and his responsibilities to community. But Parker feels dangerously unprepared for a journey into the woods. His Baker is, in a great way, a hair's breadth away from a damsel in distress - and we're never quite sure if he's just going to be steamrolled by the greater forces at play, or go full on dark and desperate. His Baker brings the lines of the finale: "There are always wolves, there are always spells..." to painful life. This Baker truly believes that if he just crosses his "t's" and dots his "i's" that they will finally be able to live in a peaceful world with "no more wolves". He must learn that there are always wolves... emphasis on the ALWAYS. Similarly to the "Secret Garden" sentiment ("if you look the right way you can see that the whole world is a garden.") In this "Into the Woods" we, and the Baker finally realize that "the whole world is the woods". Making his storyline of "am I going to face it, or am I going to run away?" Incredibly poignant. This is echoed in Michael Gould's reading of "All is repaired!" at the end of act 1. The Mysterious Man truly thinks that if he can just lift the curse on his house that everything will be fine. It won't. There are ALWAYS wolves. Breaking the curse brings his son a child. It does nothing to chase away all the "wolves" in his life. The Narrator says right before he is killed by the characters whose story he is telling: "You need an objective observer to pass the story along" and the Witch responds: "Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it." Therein lies the challenge at the heart of the show - how do you pass the true, awful story along to your children, the ones who will come after you, when you know your children are listening, deeply listening, to everything in the story - the things you want them to remember, and the things you never want them know? What happens when you take responsibility for being in charge of your own story...one that will be the beginning of every story that comes after you? How do you prepare them for wolves without turning them into wolves - especially once you discover you may be a wolf yourself and, if not, you will certainly never outrun the ones biting at your heels. There is this exchange between the Baker and the Mysterious Man:
Baker: I thought you were dead.
Mysterious Man: Not completely. Are we ever?
Later the Baker's Wife sings: "No one leaves for good."
Who we are, the things we do, good and bad, DON'T ever leave. We can't erase the effect we have. That we will always have. We can't right all the wrongs and wrap the story up into a happy bow.
This focus puts the framing device of the show into sharp focus - something the outdoor "Into the Woods" revival tried to put a poignant button on and, in my opinion, failed to. When the Baker starts telling his son the story of how things came to be the way they are at the end of the show, we realize that that's exactly what was happening at the start - just one generation earlier. This is the first time the doubling of the Narrator and the Mysterious Man made dramaturgical sense to me - as opposed to just being a helpful cast doubling. The story begins with a father setting the stage for the story his son, the Baker, will have to continue. The story ends with the Baker setting the stage for the story HIS son will have to continue.
This is also the first time I've gotten the feeling that what's driving the Witch's every action in this show is her love for Rapunzel. Not a personal desire for her former glory. There have been many "plot hole" debates over the years about why, exactly, the Witch is so anxious to have the curse on her broken NOW. The film went so far as to invent a new plot element - that the curse could only be lifted during a certain phase of the moon. But there is something in the way Fleetwood delivers "You are ashamed of me" to Rapunzel that somehow answers all of our questions. Rapunzel is growing up. She is ashamed of her mother. The Witch can see the writing on the wall that it's only a matter of time before Rapunzel starts actively trying to "see the world". If the Witch doesn't become someone Rapunzel can be proud of, that she feels she can listen to, it's all over. The Witch will lose her only family, and Rapunzel will suffer a horrific loss of innocence. There is something about the tenor of this production that makes us feel that the Witch very well might be right about Rapunzel staying in the tower. There is nothing truly good in this world (which the Witch will call out later: "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice.") Niceness will kill your soul. The Witch can't let Rapunzel loose in this world. Nothing good will come of it. Indeed, nothing does. Her punishment for Rapunzel's disobedience is "I will show you a world you have never seen." In the original this read as a general threat: "Wait till your father gets home." "You're gonna wish you'd never been born." Fleetwoods delivery, however, makes this less a cruel, retributive punishment and more an instructive consequence. "You want to see the world so badly? Ok. I'll show you what it's like. You've never seen it before, and now I'm going to let you know WHY I've never let you see it." There's still, somehow, kindness and hope behind it. "Ok, I'll show you the world. And then you'll realize what I've been trying to say and you'll get scared enough to come home."
As we watch the characters get their wishes at the end of act one, and then suffer the consequences in act 2, what becomes most potent here is exactly what the consequences are for the Witch. Yes, she gets the lyric at the end of act one: "I was perfect, I had everything but beauty, I had power. And a daughter like a flower, in a tower. Then I went into the woods to get my wish and now I'm ordinary. Lost my power and my flower." It tends to hit as a sentiment of "well, you're the antagonist, so of course you have to be punished." Here the loss is on par with that of our "heroes". Cinderella went to the ball and escaped her life of drudgery. But she's bored and not truly loved. The Baker and his Wife get their child, but it's stressful and exhausting. The Witch has her youth and beauty restored... and it's not enough to change her daughter's mind about her. Not enough to make her want to stay. And she must face the fact that it was the combination of forces stronger than herself (the lure of adulthood), and her own problematic choices that caused this... not the curse that was placed on her. This Witch is a woman who carries the weight of knowledge. It's never explicitly said how old she actually is - we don't know how long she lived with youth and beauty... Bernadette Peter's Witch was a woman who'd had the prime of her life stolen from her. Fleetwood's is ancient, if young and beautiful in appearance. That weight of life is powerful for the character and adds to Fleetwood's interpretation.
This production really drives home the idea of parents desperately trying to get important lessons through the thick skulls of their children before it's too late. The Mysterious Man dogging the Baker, the Witch trying to put out fires with Rapunzel, Jack's Mother desperately running after him to keep him from danger, Cinderella's Stepmother trudging through the woods with her daughters trying to fight for a better life for them. But, as we will come to learn from the development of the "Children Will Listen" theme ("Children SHOULD listen", "Children WON'T listen", "Children WILL listen"), these children ARE learning lessons... but it's the lessons of their parent's actions, not their words. The Baker isn't learning "fight for your family" from the Mysterious Man, he's learned "you can only rely on yourself, so do everything you can to escape pain and consequences." Rapunzel hasn't learned "Hold family close because the world is horrific", she's learned "You are going to be lied to and manipulated by those you care about". Jack is learning "You can't control the things that happened to you, so if you chance to "fail up" grab onto it with both hands."
And then the children become the adults, and have to grapple with how to not pass on those same lessons to THEIR children. This is where the growth and change happen. The Baker DOESN'T leave. He comes back and faces his problems. Jack stops being guided by his emotions and starts thinking things through.
Those are all the wonderful things about the show. And there are, as you can see, a plethora.
Now the drawbacks.
Some of the vocals leave something to be desired. Katie Brayben can't escape a strong pop sensibility. It's jarring to hear Sondheim treated as pop. Kate Fleetwood is...fine...vocally...but it's clear that she's an actor first, which, honestly, isn't necessarily a problem. What becomes a challenge is the fact that she has SUCH control over her other vocabularies (her incredible physicality, her inner life...) that the fact that she doesn't have enough command of her singing voice to let it work for her in equal capacity sticks out a bit like a sore thumb. We see her fighting to do what she wants to with her voice instead of using her voice as a facile vocabulary to aid in her storytelling. There is a lot of closing her eyes and "focusing" when she sings - creating moments when we see the actress working, and not the character.
As I mentioned earlier, the humor is all but absent. I feel torn about it. As I've said, in this particular production I didn't mind it's absence as much as I do in other instances (cough cough the movie cough cough). But I wasn't always sure of the cause - was it just the desire to lean singularly into a dark sensibility? Could the actors not make the humor work? (Honestly the original cast were the only ones I've seen who actually DID make it work...the humor is so quirky and so fitted to that cast you kind of have to try to imitate their line readings and accept being a second rate copy, or just not worry about it), or did the team not actually know where the moments of humor were? When Bernadette Peter's Witch said the simple line "Who are you going to tell?" in response to the Baker saying they should tell someone about the presence of a giant, it literally stopped the show. Here it's a throwaway.
This is one production of "Into the Woods" that I can honestly recommend. Normally I say "just stay home and watch the pro shot", but this is a journey worth taking.
John Davis
INTO THE WOODS is currently running at The Noël Coward Theatre in London. For tickets, please visit: https://buytickets.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/shop/tickets/series/COWITW
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