Ben Steinfeld, Jennifer Mudge and Jessie Austrian in the Fiasco Theater production of Into the Woods at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus
Into the Woods continues at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre, New York until 22 March.
Star rating: 5 stars *****
A fresh breeze is blowing through Into the Woods.
It’s not that anything ever seems stale about this enduring and always-compelling masterwork by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim. But as re-envisioned by the prodigiously imaginative Fiasco Theater, this musical – which had its Broadway premiere in 1987, was revived in 2002 and just this winter emerged under the banner of Disney on movie screens – seems newly born.
Presented at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Off-Broadway venue – the Laura Pels Theatre – it’s a stripped-down production, with ten actors plus a pianist. The actors play multiple roles and often change costume pieces in full view of the audience. Still, the populous cast of fairy tale characters, who come together as they trek through the woods each on their own individual quest for wish fulfillment, emerge as deftly drawn, three-dimensional people. And you may well feel that you’re meeting these folks for the first enchanted time.
The show combines the breezy insouciance and joyous sense of the best of children’s theatre with a mature sophistication that brings to the fore the plentiful wit in Lapine’s book and Sondheim’s score. Yet, as the scenario darkens in Act II and we learn of the pitfalls that can happen in the ‘happily ever after’, the show is almost overwhelming in emotional power.
Fiasco Theater is an ensemble formed by acting programme graduates of Brown University/Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island. It rose to prominence in 2011 with its six-actor version of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. That show played two Off-Broadway engagements, totaling almost 200 performances.
Its Into the Woods, which first played the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey in 2013, is directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld. Brody and Steinfeld are co-artistic directors of Fiasco, as is Jessie Austrian (who is also married to Brody). The three appear on stage: Steinfeld portrays the Baker; Austrian, the Baker’s Wife, and Steinfeld takes on multiple roles, including Cinderella’s Prince and Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf. Their relationships seem to cement a gratifying unity of artistic purpose, a sense of community, which adds to the strength and buoyancy of their latest effort.
That feeling overflows from the stage even before the show properly begins, as the actors appear from the wings and mull about the handsomely somewhat cluttered set designed by Derek McLane. Various chandeliers hang from above; a lattice-like arrangement of ropes, suggesting a forest, covers the back of the stage, and a pile of what looks like discarded piano tops hovers at each of the sides. The actors chat casually and wave and smile presumably to friends and acquaintances seated in the theatre.
Once the play begins, an aura of discipline takes over, but it’s a discipline of grace and skill, with no evidence of strain. There’s also admirable precision in the way the company clicks through the dialogue and storytelling; the role of the narrator is broken up and shared throughout the company. That precision is also evident in the instantaneous character shifts and the adroit handling of Sondheim’s tricky rhythms and Lisa Shriver’s simple but effective choreography.
Singing is not the strongest point for some of the company, who, in the jargon of casting directors, might be classified as ‘actors who sing’ rather than singer/actors. But Sondheim’s music is hardly short-changed. In fact, a lot of it sounds as gorgeous as it ever did, if not moreso. Although the show’s promos like to bravely declare ‘one piano’ (played wondrously by music director Matt Castle), the actors themselves on occasion augment the accompaniment by playing a variety of other instruments. They do so not in the showy way that might mark a John Doyle production, but unobtrusively while sitting on the side of the stage when the characters they depict are not involved in the action.
High on the list of the show’s grandest musical moments would be the Witch’s warning of the ‘Last Midnight’, ferociously spelled out by Jennifer Mudge. The actress’ Witch then beautifully shifts gears to lead a glowing rendition of ‘Children Will Listen’. Austrian’s Baker’s Wife, after her brief fling with Cinderella’s Prince, captures the woman’s warmth, depth and befuddlement in ‘Moments in the Woods’.
Austrian and Steinfeld join together for an infectious appreciation of each other in ‘It Takes Two’, and the latter’s plea for peace of mind in ‘No More’ is tremendously moving. Also noteworthy are the switching of Emily Young’s airy soprano as Rapunzel to the take-no-prisoners vocalising of Little Red Riding Hood, and the nimble tripping through ‘On the Steps of the Palace’ by Claire Karpen’s Cinderella. In ‘Giants in the Sky”, Patrick Mulryan’s Jack delivers an impassioned description of his trip up the beanstalk.
Then, there are the two skirt-chasing princes, played with grand humor by Brody and Andy Grotelueschen as Rapunzel’s Prince. When they aren’t galloping about the stage on their hobby horses, they hand them over to members of the audience to engage in two laugh-getting ‘Agony’ duets. The two actors also lift the laugh quotient with their portrayals of Cinderella’s two stepsisters, and Grotelueschen further adds to the frivolity with his surprisingly convincing depiction of Jack’s beloved cow, Milky White. A cowbell hung around his neck is all that, costume-wise, signifies Grotelueschen’s transformation to Milky White.
Rounding out the cast in fine fashion are Liz Hayes as both Cinderella’s stepmother and Jack’s mother, and Paul L. Coffey as the Mysterious Man.
Fiasco’s Into the Woods will undoubtedly not be the last interpretation of this piece, which, as Stephen Sondheim notes in his 2011 book Look, I Made a Hat, has turned into “a modest annuity”. (Disney, I’m sure, has bolstered that annuity.) However, Fiasco’s is certainly one to treasure.
Ron Cohen
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