NEW YORK — All great musicals rely on metaphors. But Broadway never has come up with a more pliable one than “Into the Woods,” the beloved masterpiece by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine that uses a fairy-tale mashup to explore the universals that please, worry, seduce, calm and destroy us.
That’s why audiences are leaning into this show right now with a hunger that must be lifting a starry cast that includes Sara Bareilles, Patina Miller, Phillipa Soo, Brian d’Arcy James, Gavin Creel and Joshua Henry, some transferring their roles from the City Center Encores! staging, others new to the Broadway journey just for the summer at the St. James Theatre.
At various point in this show, the woods represent adventure, abandonment, ungrateful children, sexual betrayal, worry, pain and, of course, death. It is pliable to any moment, so surely some will have the losses of COVID-19 come to mind as the destructive giant stomps around, or the divisive political turmoil of the recent months or perhaps a perceived threat to democracy or personal freedoms.
