'Into the Woods" revival is stripped down to its heart
NEW YORK — Meryl Streep may have nabbed her 19th Oscar nomination for Into the Woods, but the most valuable player in Rob Marshall's film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical actually never appears on screen.
It's Jonathan Tunick, the brilliant orchestrator whose Broadway collaborations with Sondheim date to 1970's Company. As much as any performance or bit of scenic wizardry, Tunick's lush, vivid work defines the most thrilling moments in Marshall's movie, from the opening number onward.
Of course, Sondheim's melodies and lyrics can thrive in many different settings, as theater audiences have been reminded in the past decade by John Doyle's minimalist stagings of Company, Sweeney Todd and Passion — and as they will discover afresh in the Fiasco Theater production of Into the Woods (* * * ½ out of four) that opened off-Broadway on Thursday, via the Roundabout Theatre Company, at the Laura Pels Theatre.
First presented at Princeton's McCarter Theatre in 2013, this delightful and deeply moving revival — helmed by Fiasco co-artistic directors Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, also in the cast — offers an approach to Sondheim and Lapine's fairy-tale mashup that is as far removed from Marshall's sweeping, lavishly cinematic vision as you could imagine. Derek McLane's barely-there set design for the new Woods makes canny use of items that might be used by children at play, from stick horses to the yarn that functions as Rapunzel's hair.
The actors juggle roles; Brody and Andy Grotelueschen play Cinderella's whiny stepsisters in drag and also appear, respectively, as Little Red Riding Hood's lecherous Wolf and Jack's beloved cow, Milky Way, with neither costumed to suggest a different species. (Brody also turns up as Cinderella's Prince, Grotelueschen as Rapunzel's.) As in Doyle's Sweeney, various cast members double as musicians, trying their hand — awkwardly, at times — with instruments placed on both sides of the stage. Pianist/music director Matt Castle guides them through slim but sparkling orchestrations, crafted by Castle and Frank Galgano.
Somehow, this let's-put-on-a-show strategy results in something both less self-conscious and more poignant than the film, or some previous stage productions of Woods, for that matter. Stripping the show down to its essentials and entrusting them to a company whose biggest asset is its youthful vivacity, Brody and Steinfeld mine the urgency and tenderness in Lapine's book and Sondheim's lyrics — which, for all protestations otherwise, can be disarmingly simple and direct.
Children Will Listen, which urges, "Careful the wish you make," is often cited as the tune that sums up Woods' message; but the even more exquisite No One Is Alone is just as fundamental, reminding us, "Someone is on your side ... Someone else is not." The performances here — from Jennifer Mudge's fierce, witty Witch to Emily Young's refreshingly earnest Red Riding Hood (and droll Rapunzel) — help ensure that Woods' keen observations about both autonomy and community ring out as forcefully as ever.