Brilliant, dark, devastating, long, involving, strange, epic, long, chaotic, beautiful, funny, and long: every word accurately describes Torn Ticket II's spring major, Into the Woods. Steven Sondheim and James Lapine's deconstruction of the fairy tale was brought to life over the weekend with stunning vocals, great gags, and vision. It is their most ambitious project I have seen here, and without a doubt the most successful.
Mixing the fairy tales of Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk (along with the added characterization of a baker and his wife) the musical chronicles many adventures in and through the woods of an enchanted kingdom. After a long, amusing first song, we meet the characters, see what they wish for, and why they go 'into the woods.' And, of course, everything ends happily ever after.
The show is almost two separate stories: Act I an amusing fractured fairy tale, filled with silly gags, funny songs, and familiar stories. Act II is strikingly dark and dangerous for a fairytale - or any musical for that matter - as the Giant's wife from Jack and the Beanstalk shows up, and many of the main characters start kicking the bucket Act II is the Return to Oz of musicals - the darker, meaner half that is less pleasant, more memorable, and less safe.
Everyone is likely to pick one act over the other. It could be argued that Act I is wonderful but Act II is dark for the sake of being dark. It could also be argued that Act I is fluff and without Act II the show has little to no meaning. It depends on how you like your fairy tales. Either way, it can be said that this show was long.
Very long. Three and a half hours long. Good. But long. Still, it is also an original, a complex delving into the land of children's fantasy that gets plunged into reality, a shotgun marriage of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm.
But the show is the show, and what is more important here is how well it was done. I've been mixed on past Torn Ticket shows; I loved Zombie Prom (which was not a brilliant show but was a lot of fun) but was not a fan of West Side Story (an overly-ambitious project that fell flat). This time, they've taken a difficult show and pulled through wonderfully. Director Tom Damassa balances the light and the dark well, and although things get off to a jumbled start, the show takes off quickly.
While no one character can be said to be the lead of the show, Adam Stahl and Suzanne Corbett (as the baker and his wife) stand out as shining stars. They were amazing both in their scenes together and apart. There was real chemistry and thoughtfulness in how these two fairy tale characters reacted to adversity. They invested their characters with emotion, humor, and real dimension.
That does not, however, take away from what the rest of the ensemble added to the show. Vanessa Schiff, Kathleen Mulready, and Mike LaFazia (as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Jack, respectively) all brought their own touches to the show, each a fairy tale figure with a darker edge that is not immediately clear. Little Red Riding Hood becomes armed to the teeth halfway through, Cinderella realizes that maybe life is better without the prince, and Jack... well, Jack has what one could call 'issues.' Each actor was animated and performed gracefully, seeming more like real people than fantasy figures.
Mike Robb and Dan Balkin, on the other hand, get special credit for not making their characters real and sticking them in a hilarious, Rocky and Bullwinkle-esque parody. They play two princes, one for Cinderella and one for Rapunzel, whose sole purpose in life is to have adventures, ravish young maidens in the wood and move on. Balkin has a good voice and delivered the asides very well, while Robb's "princely" mannerisms got progressively funnier as the show went on. Kate Goldberg's final performance on the Tufts stage was also a memorable one, as she created a Witch that begins as a comedic character but gets progressively more human and real as the show goes on. There were times where I couldn't help but see traces of Miss Strict, the character she played in Zombie Prom, but it never took away from the presence she had on stage.
Special kudos as well to Steve Harris, who had a somewhat bizarre role as the "Mysterious Man." He was nothing but a gag in Act I and then had to switch to a serious song in Act II, but he did both expertly. Also to Elizabeth Majors, whose thankless dialogue consists mainly of singing and crying, but man, what a voice. The orchestra did a good job by not drawing attention to itself and providing a beautiful musical backdrop for the show. After the initial song, you couldn't even tell that it was students and not professionals performing the music.
The show had a simple design, but deceptively so. A huge backdrop of painted woods looked rather bare bones, but with the right lighting it became a menacing, bright, sanctuary. The show also had the best prop ever - if you missed seeing Milky White the cow, I feel sorry for you.
Last semester's Zombie Prom could be described as the musical for people who hate musicals. It was so much pure fun, high energy and throwaway fun that it won over most of the hardest critics.
On the other hand, it could be said that Into the Woods is a musical for people who love musicals. It was long, it was fantasy and, yes, it had people bursting into song for no reason. Though not everyone concurs - I had a friend who left after Act I, saying that the show was, and I quote, "retarded." Regardless, Sondheim's wonderful songs, great voices, magic, music place it high on a musical hierarchy. Torn Ticket has come a long way to get to this point, and it is a milestone. Bravo.
