INTO THE WOODS: Sondheim, Derby Playouse till 20 May
Derby
INTO THE WOODS: Stephen Sondheim
Derby Playhouse: Tkts 01332 363275 www.derbyplayhouse.co.uk
Runs: 2h 55m: one interval: till 20th May
Performance times: 7.30pm eve [except Suns and 1st May], 2.30pm matinees Weds and Sats [except 17th and 20th May], 10.00am 17th May
Audio Described 13th May matinee and 17th May eve, Sign Interpreted 13th May matinee and 18th May eve, Backchat 18th May, Education Day 17th May
Review: Alan Geary: 28th April 2006
As is usual with Sondheim, there aren’t any show-stoppers. But there’s wit, bold originality, something to tug at your moral assumptions, and pure theatrical enjoyment.Anyone looking for a show-stopper will do well to steer clear of this one: Sondheim isn’t noted for them. But if you crave sophisticated wit, bold originality, something to tug at your moral assumptions, or pure theatrical enjoyment then this is for you.
The brilliance with which Sondheim interweaves music and lyric is frequently uncanny. Someone sings the word ‘malice’ and you know it’s got to rhyme with the word ‘palace’. It does; but what you don’t expect is that the line is spoken at the same time as being sung, and the pauses and hesitations in the line are completely in accord with the character singing it and the immediate predicament in which that character finds his or herself.
It can’t be easy to rise to the sort of challenge Into the Woods throws down but, as actors and singers, the cast of this production are ferociously talented.
Names? Glenn Carter, complete with the same haircut he’s had in at least three previous Playhouse productions, is excellent as the put-upon Baker, but it’s difficult to think of a performer who isn’t. Liza Pulman, as Red Riding Hood, and Ian Lavender as the Narrator likewise.
That this is a piece of surrealist art becomes most obvious when the Narrator is dragged, under protest, by the protagonists, from the sidelines into the plot to become the fall guy; but, all along, as he pops in and out to do his bit, he makes it deliciously obvious that he thinks the traditional stories preposterous.
The stories in question - Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel - are interwoven by using the lesser-known tale of the Baker and his Wife as the over-arching component.
You approach the interval feeling that these stories have been more or less resolved and wondering what’s left to be said. In fact the second act does seem somewhat anti-climactic, some might say less enjoyable. The component stories are not so much intertwined as made to collapse into one another. The Princes from Rapunzel and Cinderella wander off onto pastures new involving Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, thus underlining one of Sondheim’s central themes: nothing but nothing in the real world, which - paradoxically - this show is all about, ever ends happily ever after.
Witch: Kim Criswell
Narrator/Mysterious Man: Ian Lavender
Stepmother/Granny/Giant: Adele Anderson
Cinderella: Annalene Beechey
Baker: Glenn Carter
Rapunzel’s Prince: Jody Crosier
Steward/Father: Graham Hoadly
Lucinda: Melissa Jacques
Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince: Glyn Kerslake
Rapunzel: Katie Lovell
Baker’s Wife: Annette McLaughlin
Little Red Riding Hood: Liza Pulman
Jack: Tom Solomon
Jack’s Mother/Cinderella’s Mother: Judith Street
Florinda: Lizzie Winkler
Sleeping Beauty: Alex Bedward/Rachel White
Snow White: Emma Kylmala/Jane Upton
Director: Karen Louise Hebden
Designer: Patrick Connellan
Lighting: Philip Gladwell
Musical Director/Musical Arrangements: Andrew Synnott
2006-05-01 09:50:21