Mr. Sondheim—tear down this wall.
And damned if he doesn't, bulldozing that barrier between beloved fairy tales and injecting his singular cynicism into stories designed as anything but in Into the Woods, which receives a supremely satisfying interpretation by Signature Productions in Summerlin.
Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics and creative partner James Lapine's book from 1987 form a sort of Crash among the fairy-tale set—a collision of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, the Baker and His Wife, and Jack and the Beanstalk, the characters interacting in a narrative that sends them into the woods and traces what happens when these fanciful folks go about their stories without concern for the consequences of their behavior. In trademark Sondheimian style, the happily-ever-after is merely the end of Act I, while Act II finds real life's backlash exacting an intense price as the characters' once-bright futures disintegrate into bickering, alienation, even death, though the survivors find a hard-won redemption.
No one ever accused Sondheim, a purveyor of theatrical melancholia, of rampant optimism.
Cinderella's prince cheats with the Baker's Wife, who dies, while the Baker—now caring for the child they worked so hard to get by swindling five items from the other characters demanded by their neighbor the witch to lift the curse of childlessness—abandons the child to Cinderella, a princess no longer enamored of her Prince Charming, who disguises her royal personage to help her fellow fairy-tale folk escape the wrath of the widow of The Giant, who demands the hide of Jack, the rascal with the beans who cut down the beanstalk and murdered her XXX-tra large hubby.
Got it?
Toss in an unsettlingly bloodthirsty Little Red Riding Hood, a hysterical Rapunzel and Cinderella's evil stepsisters, who are blinded when birds peck their eyes out.
Beyond the clever plot downturn, Lapine's dialogue captures life's disappointments and dishonesty and the weary realists it produces after dewy idealism dries up. "I was born to be charming, not sincere," admits the less-than-princely prince, while Cinderella tells him that "my father's house was a nightmare and yours was a dream. Now I want something in between."
You'll likely not see a stronger cast from top to bottom this season, deployed with an unerring sense of staging by director Phil Shelburne in a sumptuous production distinguished by scenic designer Evan Bartoletti's forest backdrop, both alluring and foreboding.
Into the Woods takes cherished childhood tales into troubled, fascinating adulthood.