Stephen Sondheim’s beloved 1986 musical, Into the Woods, intertwines the plots of various Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Each character’s wish sets off a chain of cause-and-effect, changing the lives of others in unfathomable ways. One goal unites all the characters – to go ‘into the woods’. Chasing desire, facing danger, finding love: for each character, ‘the woods’ mean something different, but they must get there at any cost.
Staging Into the Woods is no easy task. From a bare stage, you have to conjure up a deep, dark, forest. From the fairytale characters everybody knows – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel – you have to craft a story that is vibrant and new.
Directors Lydia Free and Luke Nixon of Peach Productions revel in this challenge. Their Into the Woods is all about the magic of stagecraft – the incredible feat of creating a world from nothing. We feel this from the very first scene, with its bare stage evoking the setting using just coloured light, and its ensemble cast in a wave of bodies reminiscent of Romantic oil paintings. Roughly knotted cloth hangs down to create the silhouettes of trees; it reminds us that, for these plucky travellers, “no knot unties itself”.
Its dreamy, storybook feel is balanced with deliciously down-to-earth acting. When it comes to men, our heroines are… unbothered. Cinderella (Eva Bailey) takes no nonsense from her prince, and Little Red Riding Hood (Thaejus Illango) gets belly laughs from the audience with her deadpan charm. Rapunzel’s (Eugenie Ng) fairytale grace twists into hard-hitting panic. Our heroes, like Jack (Ronav Jain), are less bothered with their quests than they are with their cheeky double entendres.
The villains are equally unforgettable. In a musical which dares to ask Little Red Riding Hood “What about the wolf’s mother?”, we are given bad guys with whom we can’t help but sympathise. Cinderella’s Prince (Ben Gilchrist) balances the self-absorbedness of a dating app profile with unexpectedly humane moments. For instance, when he has an affair with the baker’s wife, the audience is almost swept up in his craving for a perfect moment. While the Witch’s (Eleanor Bogie) evil side is well-known, it is her powerful ballads about motherhood that win our hearts. And we can’t forget a special shout-out to the side characters that steal the show. Cinderella’s stepsisters (Rosie Sutton, Iona Blair) are delightfully debauched. A pouting Milky White (Caitlyn Fraser) succeeds in entertaining the audience without a single line…
Into the Woods is a musical where the story threatens to jump out of the page. The narrator (a fluid, theatrical Oliver Spooner), after saying “I tell the stories, I’m not part of them”, is thrown into the narrative in a dramatic turn of events. This production makes a self-conscious wink at the audience from start to finish. From characters grabbing mic stands to serenade the audience, to stagehands running out with Rapunzel’s hair, this is a musical which knows how to laugh at itself. While the first run saw momentary hiccups, such as characters being out of view on stage, Into the Woods’ sense of humour means that it is well-prepared for whatever happens.
Like any fairy tale, what makes Into the Woods so powerful is that it means something different to everyone. In a world of political turmoil at home and abroad, going ‘into the woods’ has never felt more relevant. Peach Productions’ wonderfully suggestive musical leaves space for us to imagine our own meaning of going ‘into the woods’, whatever that may be.
[Into the Woods, staged by Peach Productions, is running at The Oxford Playhouse, 29th Jan-1st Feb 2025]