Of the many musicals by the late, great Stephen Sondheim, some are more grisly (Sweeney Todd), more esoteric (Pacific Overtures) and more personal (Merrily We Roll Along), but few are as audience-friendly and ultimately profound than Into the Woods.
Collaborating with James Lapine, the master composer-lyricist mashes up several familiar fairy tales – Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Jack the Giant Killer – with an original tale of a childless baker and his wife, for a largely lighthearted first act followed by darker, more adult themes after the happily ever after.
The result has proven to be one of Sondheim’s most popular shows and while commercial success is not the usual territory of Slow Burn Theatre Company, director Patrick Fitzwater has mined the material into one of the most appealing productions (running through Oct. 30) in the company’s 14-year history. In contrast to the several recent conceptual stagings the show has received, Fitzwater sees that the already hectic narrative needs no additional help, so he takes a conventional storytelling approach, relying on the first-rate cast of vocally powerful area performers he has gathered.
Anchoring the action are Ben Liebert and Melissa Whitworth as that baker and his wife, who scurry through the forest on a scavenger hunt for four specified objects that will allow them to reverse a curse of impotence placed on him by a neighboring maniacal witch. In the process, as they gain, lose and gain again those objects, they learn the value of working as a team. And when the giant’s widow, riled by Jack’s murder of her husband, threatens to stomp out the village where these familiar characters reside, they must learn the importance of communal effort to survive.
The light tone of the show’s first half is signaled by Sondheim’s bouncy, Disneyfied title jingle. True, Red Riding Hood is menaced by a brazenly lascivious Wolf. And if Cinderella’s stepsisters have their feet bloodied in an effort to fit in the prince’s glass slipper and later have their eyes pecked out by marauding birds, well, such grim matters were always lurking in the Brothers Grimm’s tales. In any event, these early moments of violence pale next to the death and destruction that await the characters in the later going.
When Into the Woods premiered on Broadway in 1987, the scourge that threatened life in “a far-off kingdom” was presumed to represent the AIDS plague. In subsequent years, the show has retained its currency, as the symbolism of the giants has stood in variously for the COVID pandemic, terrorism and other threats to domestic tranquility. Leave it to Sondheim to transform the theatrical genre he so loved far beyond mere entertainment.
Yet just because Into the Woods ventures into heady territory, it is never less than entertaining. Among the highlights of the show’s first act is the duet “Agony,” a comic lament for a pair of overprivileged princes (Ralph Metzler, Sergi Robles). And the lilting tones of Kimmi Johnson Grimes’ Cinderella and her quandary over attaining what she had wished for (“A Very Nice Prince,” “On the Steps of the Palace.”)
But like Sunday in the Park with George, which also ends its first act with a seeming tidy conclusion, the meat of the show’s message and score is in its second act. Jeni Hacker’s Witch, muffled under make-up effects in the first act, shines through with piercing authority on “Last Midnight” and “Children Will Listen.” Whitworth scores with her perplexed solo after an unexpected tryst with royalty (“Moments in the Woods”) and Liebert anchors the act with the haunting lament “No More.”
Kelly Tighe’s sylvan scenic design becomes alternately ominous and benign thanks to Clifford Spurlock’s expert lighting, while Rick Pena – who has been with Slow Burn since it inception in 2010 – again impresses with his profusion of costumes and puppets.
Fitzwater and his company rarely shrink from a challenge. With Into the Woods, a massive undertaking, the troupe again demonstrates why it has evolved into one of the region’s foremost production companies.
INTO THE WOODS, playing through Oct. 30 at Slow Burn Theatre Company, Broward Center Amaturo Theater, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. $57-$83. 954-462-0222.