NEW YORK — Broadway audiences are really into the latest revival of “Into The Woods.”
So much so that the producers of the acclaimed production — starring Sara Bareilles, Brian d’Arcy James, Phillipa Soo, Joshua Henry and Tony Award winners Patina Miller and Gavin Creel — announced Wednesday that the show must go on after all.
After a sold-out engagement at New York City Center in the late spring, the Lear deBessonet-directed update of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s beloved musical stormed Broadway, scheduled for an eight-week run until mid-August..
But due to a robust box office and the open availability of the St. James Theatre, the show will run through Oct. 16.
Set in a far-off kingdom, once upon a time, “Into The Woods” — a whimsical and adult-skewing mashup of the classic fairy tales “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Rapunzel,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella,” — premiered on Broadway in 1987, starring Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason and Robert Westenberg. After winning three Tony Awards including best score and best book, the musical was revived on The Great White Way in 1997 and 2002.
Produced all around the world, “Into The Woods” was adapted into a 2014 film, starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, James Corden and Johnny Depp.
The star-studded revival marks a Broadway return to Miller, who previously starred in “Sister Act” and the gravity defying performance in the revival of “Pippin,” where she made history as the first woman to portray the Leading Player role, and subsequently took home the Tony Award.
“I’m super thankful for not being suspended in the air on a trapeze. But this is just so fun for me…. It’s so physical,” the “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” scene-stealer told Vanity Fair of playing The Witch in “Into The Woods.” “I didn’t forget, but I kind of forgot, just how free I feel onstage; just how good it feels to be on a stage in front of an audience and with the cast and tell a story, which is as cool and as rich as this one is so timely. I missed that.”
Dedicated to the memory of Sondheim, who died last November at age 91, “Into the Woods” is officially the first Broadway show of the 2022/2023 season.
No word on which of the show’s current stars will stay for the extension but according to production publicist Rick Miramontez, additional casting is forthcoming.
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