Once upon a Stephen Sondheim, UW-La Crosse staged a vibrant production of the gleefully twisty take on fairy tales that is Into the Woods. The show, which opened Feb. 26 and runs March 4-7 at the Toland Theatre at UW-L’s Center for the Arts, is a colorful musical filled with the famed characters of fairy tales of old told in new, fractured sort of ways. It’s the kind of musical where Cinderella can be ambivalent toward the advances of a slightly dubious Prince Charming, Little Red Ridinghood happily wields a knife, and where “Ever After” is only half of the story.
Smartly directed by associate professor Walter Elder, the show is a cleverly imagined trip through a fairy tale world populated with royalty, witches, giants, and even a narrator. With the aid of sumptuous costumes and brilliantly put together sets and equally effectively light and sound design, the audience is easily transported into another world.
With such great set and costume design, lesser actors/actresses could easily be overwhelmed and get lost in the shuffle of spectacle, but this cast more than rises to the occasions and meets the difficult task of making these fairy tale characters into fully realized people.
Anchoring the production are Nick Bailey and Christine Walth, playing a baker and his wife who go off to the woods to collect a series of items to help cure a curse that has kept them from having children. Bailey and Walth work exceptionally well and have an easy chemistry that makes them characters you can root for even if they do less than good things. Their number “It Takes Two” in Act One is of particular note because it exemplifies how right the casting of these two was as their interaction makes the number, an ode to the couple's bond, a highlight.
Along the way they meet a variety of characters. I will attempt — in quick, Sondheim-esque succession — to highlight a few: there is Cinderella played by Sarah Shervey, who successfully strikes the challenging balance of cutesy and gutsy; Jack of the Beanstalk fame played Zachary Keenan, who makes Jack more than a mere simpleton but an endearingly dim-witted fellow to root for; big bad wolf as played by Alex Brick, who sinks his teeth into both the humor and the horror of the beast; two Prince Charmings in the form of Justin Cooke and Colin Thelen, who expertly use their good looks and comedic timing to send-up conventions of the dashing prince trope from fairy tales; and the prince’s steward played Andrew Kelly, who has a fantastically expressive comedic face and a restrained Nathan Lane quality to him.
Kevin Fanshaw, who does double duty in the show as both the Narrator and the Mysterious Man who periodically pops into the action, has a great comedic gift, one that anybody that saw Fanshaw as Bob Cratchit in UW-L’s A Christmas Carol would know already. The lanky Fanshaw brings a goofy charm to his narrator role that helps lighten the show in its darker moments.
Two actresses who are intricately a part of said darker moments are also shining examples of talent happening at UW-L. Elizabeth Metz as Little Red Ridinghood is a comedic star in the making, particularly in her number “I Know Things Now” as she adeptly hits all the right acting notes, detailing the confusion caused by her interactions with the ravenous wolf and finding the right line between her character’s childish gentleness and her more vicious aspects.
If all of my effusive words still haven’t convinced you to go to this show, Lindsay Van Norman’s performance as the Witch is my last plea. Her performance alone is worth the price of the ticket as she tackles the difficult witch character first played by the Broadway diva Bernadette Peters. Van Norman, like Alex Brick, succeeds in not being buried under her fantastic costuming/makeup and making the Witch a complex, fully developed character. I’ve gone to a lot of productions this theatre season and I can confidently say Van Norman’s performance is easily in the top five.
So there you have it: a great musical with intriguing performances. And they all lived, and sang, happily ever after. |
