‘Into the Woods’ Finds Its Way on Broadway

“Into the Woods” opened on Broadway Thursday night. The first act of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s fairy-tale musical is even more dazzling than it was a year ago at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater--and the second act is, alas, even more of a letdown.

One big difference--and all to the good--is the hiring of Bernadette Peters to play the wicked witch. Peters is adorably maleficent, quite the most satisfactory thing in this line since Margaret Hamilton melted. It is also clearer now that the witch is Rapunzel’s foster-mother, not just a free-floating menace. Lapine has tied down his book even more snugly than before, and the viewer doesn’t lose his way in the woods.

It helps, of course, that we have known the characters ever since we were children--Cinderella (Kim Crosby), Little Red Riding Hood (Danielle Ferland), Jack (Ben Wright), the baker and his childless wife (Chip Zien and Joanna Gleason), and so on. We know, in general, why they are chasing around the woods, what they’re running toward or away from.

But we never expected to see them run into each other. The fun at the Martin Beck Theater is to see how wittily Lapine and Sondheim work out the intersections of their stories, and yet manage to stay true to the brothers Grimm--truer than in many other modern versions of these tales that only have one plot-line to keep straight.

The matching of story, character, words and music is elegant here. So is the tone. “Into the Woods” doesn’t spoof the old tales, as so many bad children’s theater productions do. But it does play them realistically, with an eye to the problematic situations that may have inspired them. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination for us to see that Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf (Robert Westenberg) has a sexual thing for little girls, or that Cinderella’s prince (also Robert Westenberg) will impose himself on any milkmaid who catches his eye.

There’s fancy here, but not a lot of innocence. We’re reminded that these were tales originally told to keep children out of the woods.

At the same time one sees the magic of the forest, where absolutely anything can happen, a nice change from home where absolutely nothing happens. The through-line of the story has Zien and Gleason chasing down a scarlet cloak, a white cow, a golden hank of hair, etc., to please Peters as the witch next door. The adventure perks up their marriage considerably--enough so that she conceives their long-wished-for child and they live “happily ever after.”

Now you know that’s not going to happen in a Stephen Sondheim musical. Act II sees our friends discovering that what one wishes for, once got, may have unfortunate and even fatal ramifications, especially if one had to cheat a little to get it. There is also a very material threat, in the person of a giant, the wife of the one that Jack killed at the top of the beanstalk. She takes very large steps and wants to take a hostage.

At this point, the show slowly begins to fall apart. Lapine and Sondheim want to say some serious things about guilt and responsibility, but they don’t want to get too depressing about it.

This leads them to a series of false endings and a song (brought in at the very end of the San Diego run) in which it is announced, without corroborating evidence, that “No One Is Alone.”

This false-positive solution seems unworthy of a show that elsewhere won’t settle for formula. It would be more honest at this point in the story to have a song where the characters admit that everybody is alone--which is why it’s necessary for them to band together. The woods are a place for tough thinking, not platitudes.

It’s frustrating--more so than in San Diego, for some reason--to see the show get stuck in the brambles just when it should be running into the castle and freeing the princess. And yet just at the very end, Peters has a new and lovely little song about being careful what stories you tell to children. The song testifies that the material is still fresh and dear to Sondheim and his collaborators. If I had a wish, it would be that they had taken an extra year to work on the show.

Perhaps work will continue now that it’s open. The production, once again staged by Lapine, is immaculate. It has the charm of the Old Globe staging with more scenic resources: a forest that is truly dark and deep; a tower for Rapunzel that rises like an enormous ivory chess piece. (Tony Straiges again did the sets, Richard Nelson the lighting, Ann Hould-Ward the costumes.)

The Broadway cast is largely familiar from San Diego, and beautifully matched. This show is so brainy that it needs actors with hearts. Everybody here displays one--even Peters, who after all, is trying to be as good a mother as a witch can be.

Jack’s mother, Barbara Bryne, also shows the ache of tending to a not-too-bright son, almost to the point of envying the childlessness of the baker and his wife. Almost.

Ferland’s pugnacious Little Red Riding Hood--by far the toughest person in the show--also turns out to be capable of a tear or two.

The only heartless characters are the two Prince Charmings (Westenberg and Chuck Wagner), and they wouldn’t be half so funny if they realized what self-centered rats they are.

“Agony,” their lament for all unattainable maidens (as opposed to the boring ones that allow themselves to get trapped) remains the hit of the show. Sondheim can “sing”--especially when he’s kidding.