Cast: Vanessa Williams (Witch), Adam Wylie (Jack), Stephen DeRosa (Baker), Kerry O'Malley (Baker's Wife), Laura Benanti (Cinderella), Chad Kimball (Milky White)
For complete cast information, see IBDb's Into the Woods revival page.
If you've seen the original version of Into the Woods stay far away from this revival. Otherwise, I'm sure it would be a great show. I actually had to see it twice, since I bought tickets with two different groups of people before seeing it. I thought I was safe, since Into the Woods is such a great show.
I saw the OBC of the original Into the Woods on Broadway, but was still very excited about the Into the Woods revival. Into the Woods is one of my favorite shows of all time and I couldn't wait to take friends to see the show I love so much in person. I own the performance I was at on DVD, but seeing shows live is always so much better.
Unfortunately, they made a lot of really bad choices when re-vamping Into the Woods. They took out the intimate moments between Little Red Ridinghood and the Wolf, since they added another wolf. That's right - in this one, both princes are wolves. They also tossed the three pigs in the background for whatever reason during one of the trips through the woods. It made it pathetic and beyond funny.
There were a couple good changes to Into the Woods, though. They made Milky White (brilliantly played by Chad Kimball, who wasn't the original, but did take it to Broadway) a dancing character in the play with an amazing costume. Rather than dragging Milky White from place to place as they did in the first Into the Woods, Milky White is simply led and can run away on his own. The best part of this is that Milky White actually dances with the rest of the cast during the Into the Woods song numbers. The other good change was in the set design. Rather than having just the inside of three houses with nothing really special, the sets were opened up books and Rapunzel's tower is her book, the spine even reads Rapunzel. These changes were great.
The cast, for the most part, is amazing. Vanessa Williams does a great job, even though no one could compare with Bernadette Peters as the Witch. The only person who was disappointing was John McMartin (Narrator & Mysterious Man). I can't explain how upset I was by his nomination for best actor. At least he didn't win the award. That would have been much worse. Stephen DeRosa (Baker) & Adam Wylie (Jack) deserved the nomination a lot more, though.
Basically, if you haven't seen Into the Woods at all, go see this, since any version is better than none and Into the Woods is one of Sondheim's best. If you've already seen Into the Woods, wait till the next revival or a local production to see it again, since what they did to the show might make you sad.
Grade: C+
Labels: 2002, comedy, drama, musical, original, revival, Stephen Sondheim, tour
Reviewed by Kat at the 8:00 PM show | 0 screams