Theare - Into The Woods

Who/what/where: Into The Woods, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre/Digital Theatre

Digital Theatre is a clever little company that has arranged with certain theatres to film particular performances and put them online to rent/buy. Unlike most of the other digital versions of shows I own, this is not one I had seen before. As it was easily available, and was a Sondheim (which automatically makes it more appealing) I figured I would give it a whirl. The performance was filmed back in 2010.

For those of you who've been to the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre before, it's a fairly open stage. In this case they've done some pretty extensive set-design, with multiple levels and various other features.

The show is a retelling of various fairy tales intertwined within each other. The baker and his wife (Jenna Russell, cropping up in yet another musical, and another Sondheim to boot, because, well, she can, and she's very good at it too) serve to link much of it together - they're one a quest to collect certain items to lift a curse so they can have a child. Along the way they meet and interact with Cinderalla, her prince, Rapunzel, Jack (of "and the beanstalk" fame) and his cow, an interesting take on Red Riding Hood, and so on. Over the course of three nights they help each story along, advising Cinderalla, buying Jack's cow in exchange for magic beans, and so on.

The first act largely resolves itself nicely and serves as a self-contained story in and of itself. The second act builds on the events of the first though is set some time later, everyone is within their "ever after" lives, but not everyone is happy, especially not the giant (voiced by Dame Judi Dench) who has turned up (via some clever set use) to extract revenge on Jack for stealing and killing and all the things that fairy tale heroes get to do with impunity. The cast try to offer the narrator as a sacrifice, which is a nice touch. Eventually the surviving characters work together and best the giant and, once more, things appear to end happily.

As a musical, some of the tunes are not as catchy as we've seen in other Sondheim works, but there are a couple of gems along the way. Though it's not like "Merrily We Roll Along" where I had snippets of "Opening Doors" in my head for weeks afterwards, though part of that might be that I've seen that show more than once.