It’s fitting that a musical about two of the greatest children’s storytellers plays with the concept of telling a story itself. Once upon a time, the narrator tells us, as he creates circles within circles, and stops and starts the tale.
We begin in Cardiff in 1913 where young Stevie (Alice Eklund, filling in for Lily Beau) is to spend Christmas with her Lutheran-looking uncles but a storm transports her into the storybook world of the Grimm-dom. As in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, these fairytale characters enact their stories until Stevie interrupts them.
