It’s a furious-paced and intricate mosh pit of overlapping fairy tales that can be dizzying to follow.
Think of the characters from Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel all together on stage, then throw in three characters written specifically for the 1987 musical — the Baker, the Baker’s Wife and the Witch (with an unseen female monster for good measure) — and you have to smile at the fact that you have lost all threads to the multiple narratives near the end of Act I.
So when you see Into the Woods by The Non-Stop Players at Actors Cabaret of Eugene, let go of the various plot lines, sit back and appreciate the wonderful singing and dancing of the large ensemble. NSP, a Eugene-based troupe that is a resident company at ACE, opened a nine-performance run of Into the Woods Jan. 31 to rousing ovations from audiences. Six more performances are on tap through Feb. 16.
Into the Woods is the brainchild of composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, who wrote the book and directed the Broadway premiere. The Non-Stop Players’ performance of the musical stays faithful to the Sondheim-Lapine original production — which is to say that the entire show is busy, complex fun.
There is rapid-fire dense conversational dialogue between the characters (singing and spoken word) as well as complicated dance numbers that the large NSP ensemble somehow made work on the small ACE stage.
Karen Olsen, NSP’s founder and director, noted the complexity of all aspects of the musical during intermission of one of the first weekend’s performances. It is, she said, a work in progress, “but the cast loves a challenge,” she added.
The four fairy tales that are interwoven into the musical are familiar to all. From Cinderella (Jillian Vogel) to Jack and the Beanstalk (Jacob Smart as Jack), Little Red Riding Hood (Stefhani Anderson) and Rapunzel (Lexi Johnson), all four tales — and the wishes that all the characters have in the tales — play a large role in Act 1 to set up the finale.
It’s Lapine’s concept of the Baker (Chad Lowe), the Baker’s Wife (Jessica Rossi) and the Witch (Shirlanna Shoop) that steers the narrative of Into the Woods, that blows away the narrative of these fairy tales and introduces depth and nuance.
The Baker and the Baker’s Wife are closely tied to the Brothers Grimm fairy tale plot of Rapunzel. The Baker himself is Rapunzel’s brother in the original fairy tale, and the couple’s relationship holds similarities between some of the versions of the original fairy tale, such as the struggle to have a child.
In the musical, however, this struggle is due to the Witch’s curse, and it is the Witch who is the most interesting multi-dimensional character of Into the Woods. She has her pure evil side, yes, but there is a certain benevolence to her, too.
She is suffocatingly protective of Rapunzel, yet she is wise, and she tries throughout the musical to warn the characters she meets to listen and choose their paths thoughtfully, to be careful what they wish for.
Wishes may come true, yes, but they are not free.