| The other Into the Woods (VERY, VERY long) | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 06:27 pm EST 01/19/15 |
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| Saw the Fiasco production of Into the Woods Friday night. I thought I would write a short post about it, but . . . this is VERY long. That's why it has taken me a couple of days to post this. Overall, I liked it. I loved some of it, some of it was just OK, and some of it was not so good. But overall I liked it. I go into more detail at great length below, although I mostly stay fairly nonspecific. I suppose there are some sort-of spoilers so if you want to know as little as possible about the production before seeing it, don't read any further. As I'm sure most everyone here knows, this is performed by a cast of 10 (or 11, if you count the pianist who is onstage). Four actors play only one role (Baker, Baker's Wife, Witch, Mysterious Man), and there is much doubling and even some tripling of roles for the rest of the cast. The Narrator is cut. His lines, or at least most of them until the scene with the giant's wife, are divided up among the cast. The musical director/pianist very occasionally he steps in with a line of narration and at one point plays (most amusingly) a small role. The cast supplements his work by playing instruments, but even more than with the Doyle Sweeney and Company, the piano dominates. One of the nice things about the production is that it's (mostly) unamplified. Or at least that's how it sounded to me. There are places where some sort of amplification is used to create reverberation effects (that's probably not the right term). I don't know if that means that some of the actors are wearing mics, although I saw no signs of anyone wearing a mic, or if there's another way they can do those effects, perhaps with area mics just turned on at certain points. If the actors are wearing mics and are being amplified throughout, then I must say that they've hidden them well and that the sound is almost always very natural except when the effects are being employed. Every once in a while someone sounded almost unnaturally loud and I did wonder a bit if there were some hidden mics onstage. But it may just be the acoustics of the space when someone is downstage and singing loud. Three or four times when the orchestrations get heavier (as heavy as they ever get since I don't think more than four people are ever playing at one time and perhaps no more than three), an actor can be a bit hard to hear, but that's pretty rare. The only place where it is perhaps a bit of a problem is the Witch's rap, where of course it's important for the audience to hear every word. While the orchestrations are actually sort of neat there, I wonder if perhaps if perhaps they are a tad too much. For the big monologue numbers, the actors come downstage center and just deliver them without moving around. This is effective. Much better than in the national tour when Lapine retained the way Little Red and Jack moved across the stage in "I Know Things Now" and "Giants," but without the passerelle, it looked pointless. It's nice to have the cut section of "A Very Nice Prince" restored. They do it very well, making the most of the lyrics. The Witch's "Lament" is the version that was performed in the original Broadway production (not what's on the cast recording). The production includes "Our Little World" and makes a better case for it than I would have expected. Perhaps in part because this is only the second time I've seen it onstage, this was one of my favorite parts of the show. I have to say that Jennifer Mudge and Emily Young make the most of the song, more than justifying its inclusion. The cutting of the Narrator works well enough. The narration is divided up among the cast members. Given that the actor playing the Mysterious Man plays no other roles, I might have liked to see the Narrator included. If you didn't know that he wasn't there, you wouldn't miss him, but I do wonder if his absence is not helpful to the show. Also basically cut are the two midnight sequences and the sequence at the end where, again, most of the characters come come out to share a proverb-like commentary (or "watchcry," as Anyone Can Whistle has it) on his or her experience and what he's learned or believes. I didn't miss those greatly, but a section of the finale is cut and I did miss that. There were two cuts I found odd, but a friend reminded me that one of them was in the 2002 production and I guess that I didn't really notice it at the time (although I did notice the same cut in the movie): Little Red never says that there's some pitch at Granny's. She and the Baker and Jack do exit, presumably to spread the pitch that i guess everyone just knows where to find, but when she comes back she does tell Cinderella that her Granny is gone. I found this a tad odd. It does make sense of something that was always a bit puzzling in the original — it's been established that they can't find Granny's, so how can they run off and now find Granny's so quickly? But that could have been solved by simply having Little Red say, "There's some at Granny's, if we can find her house," and the Baker saying, "We'll try again, or perhaps we can find some someplace else." Since Little Red still does say when she comes back "My granny's gone," that now comes rather mysteriously out of nowhere and I suspect makes little impression on first-timers (if there are any). IIRC, the movie simply cut that line too, which may have been what led to the cutting of the "Sometimes people leave you" part of "No One Is Alone," leaving an odd torso of a song that I don't think works too well. Oh, well, that's another's story, never mind, anyway . . . (Yes, I know that "Sometimes people leave you" shows up later in the movie.) But a specific production choice that I found it odd was that Jack runs in a different direction than Little Red and the Baker when they exit to find some pitch. Another cut that bothered me (and I don't think this has been in any previous major production, at least none that I know of) was that the giant's wife merely says "Now justice will be served" before getting killed. She does not follow it (or at least she didn't Friday night) with "And I will leave your kingdom." I really think she should. Moving on. To my surprise, I did not mind that men played the stepsisters, though it's not something that I would recommend all productions do. And the doubling and tripling of roles and the way the transitions between characters are worked (when they need to be fast) are well done. In fact, one of the most effective and moving moments of the productions is when two of the transformations occur simultaneously. The one thing that I wish had been a bit more representational was the Witch's ugliness, but given the compromises that both Broadway productions had to make when it came to the transformation scene, I suppose the choice made here is understandable. But I wonder if newcomers to the show will think anything other than that she's wearing a partial mask for some reason. There are some nice touches in the orchestration, some interesting choices in how to present the music, but you do have to accept that some of the playing is not especially good. And clearly the Fiasco people know that some of the playing is barely getting by. Perhaps a bit more problematic is that some of the singing is not good. Honestly, not all of the cast is up to what they're asked to do, both in terms of singing and acting. Those folks are a minority, I would say, but they make a difference that's not for the best. Here and there are a few very effective moments that promise something ultimately more wrenching may be in store than what we end up getting. (Others may feel that they did get that, of course.) At points it seems like the production is going to try to explore the feelings of loss and despair that are at the heart of the second act, but for me that doesn't end up happening. A few moments are very moving, but those are more due to very effective directorial imagery than to the performances. The production's overall point seems to be "No one leaves for good." That is the thought that seems central to the production. So it's not so much about loss here as it is about restoration and also perhaps transformation (you don't disappear when you die, you transform). There are some lovely moments when the choice has been made to slow down the music and allow the lyrics to make their effect more fully than usual. The intimacy of the space and how it's used at times allow certain moments that can be a bit muddy in bigger theatres with bigger stages to be more focused than usual. I don't want to get too specific about the things that I especially liked as I don't want to spoil the best moments (or at least the moments I found best) for people, but I will say that some of the highlights for me were "Cinderella at the Grave," "A Very Nice Prince," "Our Little World," the first scene with the giant's wife and "Lament," and "Last Midnight," even if that ends a bit anticlimactically. And everything involving Milky White. It's a fine evening, it's a pleasant evening, sometimes it's an affecting evening, but I didn't feel it wholly fulfilled the promise of its best moments. Some scenes fall very flat indeed in comparison with other productions I've seen, and I didn't see that anything new or interesting was particularly gained in those scenes, although there are a few places where I felt that something new (to me) and effective was found. I suppose I prefer an angstier interpretation of the show. With the exception of Andy Groteluschen as Milky White, I can't say that anyone in the cast was at the level of the best past performances I've seen in any of the roles, although a few did quite well. It felt to me like the cast was taking a sort of Story Theatre approach to the acting, which is clearly the feel of the production overall. I would have preferred a bit more gutsiness. (Not that gutsiness is impossible with that approach, as anyone who remembers "The Robber Bridegroom" in Paul Sills' Story Theatre can probably attest.) There are times when people seem to be going for more intense choices, and getting there part of the way, but I wanted more of that. There is also a bit of inconsistency in terms of different basic approaches. I suppose this is always to some degree an issue in productions of the piece as some characters are clearly written as less than complete human beings with whom we are not expected to get emotionally involved while others are written more as real people and we are expected to get involved with what they're going through. And some characters straddle the line. Some productions try to bridge the divide. This one does not really seem to be trying to do that. I guess that I prefer to see even the cartoonish characters played with a bit more reality than is mostly the case here. The woman who doubles as Jack's Mother and Cinderella's Stepmother does try, even if she didn't bring me to tears, as one I've actress I've seen managed to do, with her "Some people are cut out to battle giants" speech. I don't expect Florinda and Lucinda to seem three-dimensional and possibly bring me to tears over their feelings of inner inadequacy, but it does make sense to make them seem somewhat like recognizable human beings, although (as I said) it didn't bother me greatly that this production does not. The Princes here are perhaps a bit more problematic in that respect, and both versions of "Agony" went for surprisingly little in comparison with what I've usually seen in the past. I would say that this is a worthwhile production. Not the last word on ITW, but I don't imagine that anyone is saying that it is the last word. I can imagine some people focusing on the inadequacies — missing the woods for the trees — as there are definitely are some important ones. I can see someone feeling that even the good stuff is not that good and the lesser stuff is simply bad. But I liked some of it a lot and most of it well enough. If I had felt that "No More" and the "No One Is Alone" sequence had found the depths that are there to be plumbed in those sequences, I would have probably gone away feeling very, very positively instead of fairly positively. There is a lovely choice made in the finale that might have sort of made up for that to some degree, but then the playing of the choice was rather on the feel-good side, which didn't really work for me. I do like some other choices in the finale, even though I wish the cut had not been made. I would recommend it to people who already know the show. I wouldn't especially recommend it to people who don't know the show. Or I might suggest watching the DVD of the Broadway production first and then seeing this. In some ways it's kind of like seeing a very good, inventive college production. | |
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