There’s a sly modesty to the opening number of the Bridge Theatre’s new revival of Into the Woods. Choreographed around a raised rectangular platform, the pinballing scene-setter is as lively and slick as you’d hope, but the staging is almost dispiritingly sparse. The towering 1986 classic by musical theatre’s late genius Stephen Sondheim feels here almost bewilderingly small. And then, the backdrop lifts, and the stage expands. And keeps expanding. It’s a breathtaking Dorothy-in-technicolour sort of flourish: by the time we get a full view of the lavish woodland set, it’s clear that spectacle was never going to be an issue.
In its first act, Into the Woods begins as a mashup of familiar children’s fairytales. We have the blithely confident Red Riding Hood (Gracie McGonigal), the soft-natured dimwit Jack (Jo Foster) of “and the beanstalk” fame, and we have Cinderella (Chumisa Dornford-May), here grieving and seemingly ambivalent to the amorous attentions of the oh-so-charming prince (Oliver Savile). Knotting these stories together are original characters: the Baker (Jamie Parker), his wife (Katie Brayben), and a manipulative witch (Kate Fleetwood). By act two, any snug fairytale artifice has dissipated, and the characters are left to contend with their thornier human realities.
