Into the Woods @ Greenside

Once Upon A Time… Neitzsche declared “God is Dead” and promptly went mad. So what happens when a bunch of fairy tale favourites feed their story teller to a great big ol’ giant?

Just as in the quantum world, without an objective observer the behavior of the subject greatly changes, suddenly Charming Princes are having extra-marital affairs with perfect strangers, and heroines are unexpectedly crushed leaving widowers to father children alone.

In a complicated story of many interweaving subplots, everyone has a wish, and the pursuit of those wishes entangle the well-known characters from best-loved fairy tales, such as Cinderella, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Rapunzel, and what could be any wicked witch that you like. There are moral questions raised such as whether the end justifies the means - or in Jack’s case – the beans.

Some conjecture that the reason why Into The Woods is not better known because it was released in a year dominated by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. However, the problem may lay deeper. The score, while buoyant, lacks variety and remarkability – there are no real songs to take away.

While there are some wonderful moments such as the savvy tying of knotted subplots, and those sparks of remarkable lyrical wit we have come to expect from Sondheim, they are sadly overshadowed by the excessive length of the piece. Perhaps in the end Into The Woods simply attempts to tell too many fairy tales at one time… The End.