I caught Richmond Shakespeare’s, Jase Sullivan-directed, Into the Woods, mid-run at the Cramer Center for the Arts deep in the West End last night. After a long week doing much less enjoyable things, a nice, light musical in a beautiful theater sounded just right. I clearly had forgotten much of what I thought I remembered from catching the 1991 filmed stage performance featuring Bernadette Peters. Thirty years weathers the shoreline of memory pretty thoroughly because this play is wicked. I was reminded why this is a classic. Off-beat, unexpected, deep, and morally challenging begins the list of adjectives I could heap on Into the Woods.
For those unfamiliar with the show, the incomparable Stephen Sondheim (of West Side Story, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and many more) lays broad, witty strokes of primary-colored storytelling befitting fairy tales in the half before intermission. That fifteen minute stretch between the first act and the last leaves you wondering where else the play could go. All the characters’ arcs seem to have been concluded. Jack got the golden hen and the harp. Red’s wolf is slayed. The baker and his wife lifted the witch’s curse, and Cinderella found her prince.
Play’s over, right? Not in the least bit. You could argue it hasn’t even begun.
The second half of the show sees Sondheim taking a new pass at that refrigerator drawing and begins to blend, shade and layer philosophical nuance – pain, regret, betrayal, murder, and consequences – into the characters’ lives at a clip. It serves as a reminder of The Brothers Grimm’s macabre humor and Sondheim’s lyrical brilliance. The solo soliloquacious songs (I’m coining the word, don’t @ me) provided to the leads as they accept or challenge their fates are chapters, not passages, of the heart. Aching, longing, guilt, bloodthirst – all the demons get their flames.
There’s a deep well from which to draw up performances rich in dynamic growth, and Richmond Shakespeare’s offering is filled to the brim with them. There was a very short shaking off of rust – a clipped line, a lost note, a tired voice – at the beginning, but everything else was gleaming chrome.
The baker and his wife are perfectly cast, and perfectly played. Sondheim’s marital singsong banter is bolstered by Durron Marquis Tyre-Gholson and Maggie Marlin-Hess’ command of their body and vocal languages. Like the show itself, their ascents from caricature to portraiture are unexpected and poignant. Their individual solos in the second act are heartbreaking and all too familiar. Extra special applause for Mr. Tyre-Gholson’s “No More”. Yes, Sondheim wrote a phenomenal song that surprisingly attacks your emotions, but, man, he really twists the knife on this stage. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Susan Sanford’s Witch and Terence Sullivan’s Big Bad Wolf are scene-chewing, show stealers in a production full of them. The wolf is just the slimiest, hungry/horny beast, and got deservedly big laughs. The Witch, the center hub the wooded adventures circle around, is given room to be an effective moral contradiction with an angel’s voice. Ms. Sanford’s last song, a eulogy to trying to save people from themselves, lands with proverbial middle fingers in the rearview mirror.
Terence Sullivan also plays Cinderella’s Prince Charming alongside Field Oldham, Rapunzel’s Prince Charming. The moments they’re on stage together are the funniest written, in song and dialogue. They’re elevated by the duo’s chemistry as privileged brothers who have clearly never had a bad day until, well, now. Their riches, self-centeredness, and physical beauty allow even the slightest inconveniences to produce “agony” – so cartoonishly realized as to induce swooning. The sarcasm for their predicaments is just dripping off Sondheim’s pen.
Milky White the cow, and Cinderella’s birds, played by Katharine Malanosky and Thomas Kaupish, are creatively realized through puppetry. If you keep your peripheral on the puppeteers while focusing on the puppets, there’s a whole other dimension to enjoy. Milky White’s death (oh, so many people die in this musical) sells the relationship between what we’re supposed to see and what we actually see as a thinly veiled creative plaything.
Red Riding Hood, Jack, Cinderella all deliver their roles with justice to the material, with Grey Garrett’s fancy-slippered princess shaking the house with such a powerful voice. This cast is chock full of divas. I will be scanning credits for their names with anticipation for their next gigs. Jase Sullivan’s direction and the crew’s set, costume, lighting, and sound design are inventive and well-rehearsed. Hats off to what is clearly a professional squad that could excel anywhere.
I had so much fun, and had so much to think about, on my long drive home to the Fan from Short Pump after the show. The unique power of theater has never dimmed, but it is fleeting. You just gotta go catch the light while you can. Please make it a point to visit this stage before Into the Woods leaves it. It’s fantastic.
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