Into the Woods: a ‘hypnotic’ production

Stephen Sondheim’s 1986 musical “Into the Woods” is “the work of a genius on the peak of his powers”, mentioned Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. With a “great” ebook by James Lapine, it attracts on fairy tales together with “Cinderella”, “Rapunzel”, “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Little Pink Driving Hood”, and pushes these “acquainted tales into absurd, existential, ultimately very shifting territory. It’s each playful and profound, mischievous and honest, cleverly meta but additionally a ripping yarn”.

Sondheim’s lyrics are by turns bathetic, audacious and poignant, and his lush rating of baroque nursery rhymes “feels as vividly alive because the forest itself”. It’s a “elegant however fiddly” piece that’s not often revived as a result of it’s laborious to tug off, and requires a big solid of first-rate singing actors. So huge credit score is because of Jordan Fein: his new manufacturing “smashes it”.