Music and Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
Book: James Lapine
Director: Jordan Fein
There is no such thing as a happy ending, and if you stray from the expected path, you may find an altogether better ending. So it turns out for Stephen Sondheim’s fairy tale characters in the much-deserved West End transfer of the Bridge Theatre’s Into the Woods, a glorious, funny, moving and timeless production that relishes its smaller space at the Noël Coward Theatre to tell a more claustrophobic story. Directed by Jordan Fein, for audiences lucky enough to see this memorable version, it will be happy ending enough.
A raft of fairy tale characters find themselves dashing about in the woods at the same time across three successive nights, all holding items that the Baker and the Baker’s Wife need to lift a curse and have a child. Throw in a witch, some randy Princes, a giant and a puppet cow and anything can and does happen in the woods.
There are so many highlights in Fein’s joyous production that in emphasising just one or two, there is a danger of overlooking 10 others equally deserving of a mention. The cast are uniformly excellent, but it would be remiss not to celebrate the return of Kate Fleetwood to the role of the Witch, having been in the original cast back in December at the Bridge Theatre. She is more magnificent, malevolent and melodious than ever as a complex woman driven by love and hate at the same time. She is matched by the comedy of arrogant royalty, Cinderella’s Prince (Matthew Seadon-Young) and Rapunzel’s Prince (Lucas Koch), who are brilliantly, hilariously heroic but entirely lacking in self-awareness and occasionally homoerotic. The audience, and every woman who encounters them, is completely and hopelessly in thrall.
Perhaps more noticeable on this small stage is the work that designer Tom Scutt and especially lighting designer Adam Fisher have had to do to compress the scale of their forest from the much larger Bridge Theatre stage and instead create the impression of depth and time moving through the foliage. Creating a denser feel in this new space, Fisher in particular does some impressive, inventive work as sunlight cuts through the trees at different angles and light is used to suggest much of the atmosphere as well as the presence of giants who ripple the earth.
Into the Woods is a strange and fantastical piece that takes the audience’s expectations about stories they know and endings they are sure of, offering, in Act II certainly, something else in its place, asking big questions – as Sondheim liked to do – about the big stuff and the small stuff all mixed in together, our responsibilities in the world, in communities and what it means to love something and someone beyond yourself even when it’s painful or ends unhappily. Fein has created a production that has magic and drama, danger and hope, and is sinister and illusory all at once. Stray from the path and take a trip into these woods that you’ll never forget.
Runs until 9 January 2027
