There’s a sly modesty to the opening number of the Bridge Theatre’s new revival of Into the Woods. Choreographed around a raised rectangular platform, the pinballing scene-setter is as lively and slick as you’d hope, but the staging is almost dispiritingly sparse. The towering 1986 classic by musical theatre’s late genius Stephen Sondheim feels here almost bewilderingly small. And then, the backdrop lifts, and the stage expands. And keeps expanding. It’s a breathtaking Dorothy-in-technicolour sort of flourish: by the time we get a full view of the lavish woodland set, it’s clear that spectacle was never going to be an issue.
In its first act, Into the Woods begins as a mashup of familiar children’s fairytales. We have the blithely confident Red Riding Hood (Gracie McGonigal), the soft-natured dimwit Jack (Jo Foster) of “and the beanstalk” fame, and we have Cinderella (Chumisa Dornford-May), here grieving and seemingly ambivalent to the amorous attentions of the oh-so-charming prince (Oliver Savile). Knotting these stories together are original characters: the Baker (Jamie Parker), his wife (Katie Brayben), and a manipulative witch (Kate Fleetwood). By act two, any snug fairytale artifice has dissipated, and the characters are left to contend with their thornier human realities.
If a baseline level of craft-competence is met, it’s hard to really mess up a revival of Into the Woods too badly. The source material – Sondheim’s music and lyrics and the book by James Lapine – is so rich, so complexly artful, that there will always be value in simply seeing these songs performed aloud. (The miscast and sanitised 2014 film adaptation may argue otherwise, of course.) To this end, it’s no bad thing that director Jordan Fein has opted for a fairly down-the-line approach. There are no real surprises here, no radical reinvention in characterisation or staging. But it’s a production that really plays to the musical’s strengths: the big moments feel enormous.
“Agony” is one such moment – a preening duet of mutual self-pity, sung with garish gusto by the two princes. (Both are superb in supporting roles: Rhys Whitfield as Rapunzel’s prince, and Savile as Cinderella’s, wearing a farcically protrusive codpiece.) Fleetwood’s second-act showstopper “Last Midnight” brings the house down, and rightly so.
Among the ensemble, there are several standouts – Brayben, Fleetwood, and Dornford-May are terrific, while Michael Gould is an enjoyably ramshackle narrator – and no damagingly weak links. Foster is a little broad when it comes to some of Jack’s spoken lines, but they prove themselves a dab hand with physical comedy (much of it involving a cow puppet) and shine as a vocalist on the melodious “Giants In the Sky”. McGonigal’s take on the wry “I Know Things Now”, meanwhile, is musically proficient but a little static. As the play progresses, she does a nice job bringing out the shifting psychology of her character.
It helps that so much of the production, particularly the set design, costume design (by Tom Scutt) and lighting (by Aideen Malone), is stellar: on a purely aesthetic level, this production is a thing of lush and arresting beauty. As far as revivals go, there are far worse tacks to take than that. Fein and co have treated this musical with the care and seriousness it deserves – and that’s a spell not easily broken.
On at the Bridge Theatre until 30 May
