This energetic and clever staging of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods confirms for me once again my belief that Austin's City Theatre offers the best entertainment value for money available in the area today.
Ours is an age of disclaimers, so let me be explicit, with a "claimer": I have been a fan of the City Theatre for more than two years. Andy Berkovsky and the artists working with him at the tidy little 85-seat theatre behind the Shell station at Airport Road and 38 1/2 street offer a season that is unmatched for its scope, variety and prices. The City Theatre offers a nine-play season ticket for two for only $150. You couldn't go to the movies for that.
I had acquired the CD of the 1987 original Broadway cast recording of Into The Woods, but this past weekend at the City Theatre I realized that only through performance can one appreciate the richness and complexity of the piece. The City's space gives Into The Woods the cozy intimacy appropriate for a work written as a chamber musical. Come early, so as to secure your seat in the closer rows, or pay a couple of dollars extra to reserve at second-row, center. You will be delighted by the proximity and vivid action.
The 18-member cast features both faces well known in regional musical theatre and newcomers. In Act I they weave for us a tapestry drawn from the familiar tales of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel and Little Red Ridinghood. Librettist James Lapine uses the additional characters of a childless baker and his wife, figures drawn directly from the tradition of German folktales or Märchen, to bring all those stories together in the magic space of "the woods," where each is bent on an individual quest. They carom off one another in unexpected ways but by the end of Act I they've all achieved their Happily Ever Afters.
In Act II Sondheim and Lapine turn that tapestry over. Life goes on, to the characters' consternation. They face discoveries, unexpected consequences, delights, ennui, losses and disappointments. Fairy tale outcomes are undone, dissolved or turned rich and strange.
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