Ask many a boomer about their scariest childhood memory, and they may very well cite the extraordinary 1957 East German production, The Singing Ringing Tree, shown regularly on the BBC before, one presumes, an adult saw it and thought, “Uh oh…” It was a kind of anti-Disney (well, the saccharine commercialised studio that emerged after World War II at any rate) that pitched us kids into a Mitteleuropa world of magical threat and fractured families, the grotesque far outweighing the fair in the narrative.
At about the same time (the mid-80s) that a collective unease started to censor or, at least, soften, the real horrors that underpin the Grimms’ fairytales and Arthur Rackham’s hideous, spiky illustrations gave way to accompanying images that would not look out of place on a Hallmark birthday card, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine set about excavating the stories’ dark underbelly in their musical, portentously titled Into the Woods.
They unpacked characters who were being shorn of their complexities by mass-market media and gave them back to us as real people, motivated by greed, lust, fear, loneliness, mischief, frustration - a smorgasbord of New York neuroses. Suddenly, an heroic, goody-two-shoes Little Red Ridinghood becomes a mardy teen looking after number one, the Princes tire of their dreamy fairytale princesses and seek out a Snow White or Sleeping Beauty for a bit of extracurricular hanky-panky and Jack is revealed to be an avaricious thief who slays the giant almost on a whim and invites retribution as a consequence.
All of this re-discovery/subversion, depending on whether you grew up with The Snow Queen or Frozen, comes crashing over the fourth wall at a tremendous lick, a torrent of Sondheim’s signature smart rhymes and recursive rhythms pouring out Lapine’s miraculously economical exposition, notably in the eponymous opening number, an introduction to the huge cast of characters who will fill this large stage.
We seek a foothold, and we’re granted one by a narrator (Michael Gould) but more effectively in the shape of an Everyman baker (Jamie Parker) and his wife (Katie Brayben), who look like they’ve just stepped out of a Breugel canvas in Tom Scutt’s arresting design. They want a child, but cannot conceive (and are thus condemned to an old age of penury) due to a spell placed on their family by a vengeful witch, who has the look and demeanour of The Rocky Horror Show’s Riff Raff. She tells them that the curse can only be lifted if they bring 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". So off, into the woods natch, they go to seek out Jack, Red Ridinghood, Rapunzel and Cinderella.
There’s a continual tension in the book and in the score between light and the dark. Moments of panto-ish slapstick and comic book villainy vie with psychological torture and murder, pulling our emotions one way and another, director, Jordan Fein, surfing the musical’s roiling storylines, keeping the narrative afloat and well clear of crashing into the rocks of pastiche. Well, mainly, though the two princes come awfully close.
It’s a lot for an ensemble cast to deliver, repeatedly morphing the familiar into the surprising, the comic into the tragic, the real into the magical. They’re anchored by Kate Fleetwood’s witch, given the best lines, often spat out of a thin-lipped mouth with plenty of Joanna Lumley’s Patsy in their acerbic misanthropy. Poignancy too as, after regaining her long-lost looks, she must come to terms with losing her powers, But can we forgive her lifelong coercive control of her daughter, Rapunzel? Bella Brown captures the impact of that torture, and it’s impossible not to think of so many cases of girls who have suffered so much under the tyranny of psychotic parents. These tales have stood the test of time because they are true, even if they are also fantastical.
Chumisa Dornford-May, whose luminous diction would find favour with the composer himself if he’s looking on from his heavenly beanstalk, also cuts a tragic figure as a Cinderella who cannot find a role in the Prince’s palace, nor true love from her flighty, immature husband. Like a Studio Ghibli heroine, the woman wants to work in order to secure her place in a world in which she cannot be mere ornamentation.
The comic cuts largely come from Gracie McGonigal (pictured above), a splendidly Veruca Saltish Red Ridinghood, pretty much unconcerned about the fate of her grandmother or anyone else, wrapped up in a cloak of entitlement that renders her a pouty, empathy-free zone. Jo Foster also garners plenty of laughs as the simple-minded, if ruthless, Jack, devoted to his misgendered cow, Milky White, a puppet with charm to burn.
I’m unconvinced in a production of this scale (with Paddington just up the road) that the wronged and murderous Giantess is best represented by thunder and lightning, for all Adam Fisher’s impressive sound design and Aideen Malone’s auditorium-wide lighting. I suspect that noise and flashing lights won’t cut it for the generation who have grown up on MCU movies.
It’s an old gripe, but no less true for it, that Sondheim’s songs are not exactly whistling-friendly toe-tappers for the bus ride home, the structures and absence of hooks appealing more to the mind than the soul. Sure songs like the Princes’ "Agony" have plenty of wit and "Children Will Listen" a heartfelt, if slightly overcooked, message, but in their wilful non-catchiness, they need time to breathe a little. The band, under Mark Aspinall, do a fine job, but I needed a bit of the space afforded by a show like A Little Night Music to appreciate fully one song before another, often sung by a different character following a different arc, burst forth from the stage. It’s seldom that you’ll hear a critic asking for a longer show, but ten minutes more would not have hurt this one.
Nevertheless, if you haven’t seen it, if you go down to Into The Woods tonight, you’re sure of a big surprise. And, if not, there’s a Teddy Bear having a picnic elsewhere in London if marmalade sandwiches are more to your taste than Red Ridinghood’s bony grandma.
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