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 After the success of the 1998 production of Radio Gals,
this renowned popular musical became the first full-scale collaboration between
the Theatre Arts and the School of Music Vocal Performance programs since I have
been teaching at Stetson.
Into the Woods is a mostly humorous but often dark reworking of
familiar fairy tale characters as three-dimensional human beings struggling
within the stereotypes of their own respective stories. The play was inspired by
child psychologist Bruno Bettleheim’s book The Uses of Enchantment: The
Meaning and Importance of FairyTales, in which the author justifies the
often-censored imagery of fairy tales. Presenting the characters in the process
of self-discovery, the play restores some of the brutality, horror, and
sexuality revealed by the Brothers Grimm in their versions of the tales.
 The play focuses on four familiar characters—Cinderella, Little Red Riding
Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel—whose journey toward maturity is
revealed through their journey through the Woods. An indecisive
Cinderella flees her Prince because she has doubts about a relationship with
him; a thoughtless Jack sets the Giant’s wife on a murderous rampage after he
kills her husband; Little Red Riding Hood’s obsession with food becomes an
obsession with bloodshed after she is released from the Wolf’s belly; and Rapunzel’s flight with her Prince causes a painful parting with the Witch, who
raised Rapunzel as her own daughter. The four tales are connected by the
Baker and his Wife, who are sent into the Woods to seek a charm
that will allow them to bear a child. In this play, as often in life, the
characters find something unexpected in their journey that helps them become more human.
 The concept for this play centered on the plot device in the second act in
which the characters rebel against the narrator in an attempt to take control of
their own lives, to "re-write" themselves in their journey toward
self-actualization. In order to highlight these "two-dimensional" characters in
their quest to live "three-dimensional" lives, the visual design included a
careful blend of two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements. The stage was
dominated by a representation of the Woods, which contained trees whose vertical
elements (trunks and branches) were composed of flat scenery, sitting atop a
huge three-dimensional root system composed of platforms and staircases.
With a nod towards the trans-culturality of the fairy tales, a gregarious
narrator was costumed to give a middle-eastern, Arabian Nights flair. All of the
characters represented as props in the Broadway production (Jack’s cow, the hen
that laid the golden egg, birds, the ballgown-dispensing tree, etc.) were played
by actor/puppeteers.
Into the Woods is sometimes performed without the second act, especially
at high schools, where the more mature and serious messages of the play are
avoided. This production presented the play in its entirety, except with some
judicious cuts designed to reduce the union orchestra commitment to under three
hours.
Review from the student newspaper
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