INTO THE WOODS MUSICAL ROMP FULL OF GRIMM TALES, GREATEST OF SINGING AND STUNNING THEATRICAL SETS
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
BRACEBRIDGE — If you go Into The Woods tonight you’re in of a big surprise.
Gorgeous dresses, magnificent trees, stunning singers, wicked witch and howlin’ wolf.
An enchanting eye-popping, ear-splitting compilation of some of your favourite forgotten fairy tales of yours and your kids’ childhoods.
Remember Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, the Prince and Princess, Little Red Riding Hood, The Baker and Baker’s Wife, Rapunzel, the wicked witch with the bitchin’ best voice and the big bad hungry wolf who always gets his in the end.
And of course Jack’s revengeful Giant — a female this time — who trods unseen, but not unheard or felt as the wonderful cast makes it feel as if an earthquake is rumbling and tumbling across the Rene Caisse Theatre stage.
Think the Grimm Brothers, bedtime — and a happy ending.
A dramatic enchanting and memorable musical romp through a fairyland filled with fun and frivolousness as The Baker and his Wife try to grow their family.
With a flat-back cow, wicked sisters, two golden slippers, and hair two storeys tall, the famed children’s stories are narrated in a tale written by James Lapine with music by Stephen Sondheim.
And directed by Emma Phillips and her artistic director daughter Molly Phillips.
It’s the 47th winter staging by the Bracebridge Rotary Club of their annual musical, which is now being presented and produced in partnership with Theatre Muskoka and Dragonfly Theatre.
The exceptional cast is superb with all the singers hitting the right very high notes.
Most notably Nicky Cutting-McLean starring as the transformative Witch and the beautifully melodic Cinderella, Kaileigh Adie.
The Baker and Wife Earl Sacrey and Lauren Rodrigues carry the story with fine acting and voices. They are quite ably augmented by Shaman Johann as Jack, Lyla Stanton as foot-stomping Red, Cinderella’s prancing Prince Nickolas Kulchar, towering Rapunzel Elizabeth Bentley, her Prince/Wolf Tim Lucifer, The Steward Thomas Flynn, Mysterious Man David Walton and Jack’s Mother Nicole Moore.
Alan Hutchings holds it solidly together as the narrator.
Most of the actors are veterans of the Muskoka stages with some fabulously talented additions this year.
They were backed as often by the delightfully light lyrical musical accompaniment of Neil Barlow and friends behind stage not seen but heard.
In the long end a prince of a show, with fine, high quality performances as judged by last night’s biased opening cocktail hour “gala” audience.
However, at three hours with intermission it’s a long show that could use a bit of axe-wielding unless you’re a true devotee of dramatic light opera singing. Many in the almost full house headed for the cloakroom after the first 90 minutes thinking it was over. They overlooked when the Hutchings said: “To be continued….”
A cute bunny bouncing across the stage with a sign would have worked better.
And subtle — if any — humour was in short supply for this local crowd reared on lots of laughter over more than four decades past of popular family-friendly performances.
Probably a bit too high brow and not recommended for younger viewers.
But for those of us with a taste and ear for grander theatre — perhaps one of the best of its kind anywhere here in years — this is a show worth sitting back, getting comfortable and enjoying ye olde days of yore
Then going home, digging out the Grimm Brothers, reading and acting out the parts to your young ones and singing them to sleep.
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