Arvada Center serves up a spectacular ‘Into the Woods’

Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, is known for crafting complicated musicals that are so precisely plotted a good director can take them in any direction. Luckily for audiences in the Arvada area, Lynne Collins is an incredibly talented and capable director who guides audiences on an enchanting evening in the Arvada Center production of Into the Woods.

Into the Woods features a book by James Lapine and follows familiar fairytale characters, like Little Red Riding Hood, Jack, Cinderella, and Prince Charming — as well as new characters like the Baker and the Baker’s Wife — on their journey through the woods. Each character has a different reason for venturing into the woods and each one has a wish: Cinderella wishes to go to the Prince’s ball, Little Red wishes for excitement, Jack wishes to keep the pet cow he’s been forced to sell, and the Baker and his Wife wish to collect four items (a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold) for their neighbor, the Witch, so she will help them break their family curse and have a baby. After undergoing numerous trials, each character receives their wish but is forced to grapple with the fact that wishing for something abstractly is much easier than actually living with the consequences of your actions.

The musical takes great pains to remind us that life is so much more complicated than it appears at first, and that sentiment is applied literally to the woods in this production. Collins cleverly sets the production in a child’s bedroom and frames the action of the musical as if it was a child hearing the story from their caretaker. As the musical begins, we see the bedroom magically transform into the woods before our eyes, and from here we know nothing is quite what it seems. Set designer Brian Mallgrave creates a gorgeous stage environment inspired by a Victorian nursery room that contains so many doors and entrance points that you — like the characters — will be constantly turned around and surprised at where the characters will appear. Many of the show’s grand transitions are nicely handled through subtle lighting changes by lighting designer Shannon McKinney.

It is quite a time to revisit Into the Woods; less than a year after Sondheim’s death and while there is a currently a splashy, star-studded revival playing at the St. James Theatre in New York. And while there are no pop stars in the cast (unlike the New York production, which featured Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife), the Arvada Center features a talented ensemble that makes the rapid alliteration and difficult rhyming scheme soar. Nicole deBree delivers a feisty and emotionally complicated performance as the Witch, mother to a child who just won’t listen and cursed with ugliness after a “bean accident” in her garden. The Witch’s presence never allows for easy answers, and I’m OK with that because deBree brought the house down every time she sang. Quynh-My Luu, as Cinderella, and Shannan Steele, as the Baker’s Wife, play women in drastically different social situations who are deeply conflicted; each character wishes for what the other has, and, through circumstances that could only happen in the woods, they are allowed to exchange fates.

The Baker (Rudy Martinez) is a stubborn presence who butts heads with Steele constantly and whose singing voice sounds so similar to actor Bryan D’arcy James, who recently played the Baker on Broadway, that we might as well be in the St. James Theatre. Cordell Cole and Jake Mendes’s performances as Cinderella and Rapunzel’s dim-witted and self-centered princes scored the biggest laughs from the crowd on the night I attended, and rightly so. Cole’s bold, energetic choices and sense of fun really resonated, and I enjoyed the flamboyant, dance-like way Mendes constantly moved around the stage. Costume designer Clare Henkel outfits the ensemble in clothing that feels straight out of a storyboard; the Ugly Stepsisters’ gowns, and (spoiler!) both of the Witch’s costumes especially pop. Collins’ staging is beautifully minimalistic and never detracts from the language of the piece.

Between the show’s many magical moments and spiraling storylines, some characters get a little lost in the staging. Jack Wardell, as Jack, and Aynsley Upton, as Little Red Riding Hood, have strong singing voices but lack the deeper characterization of their co-stars. The only moment that Collins and the actors struggle to motivate happens at the very beginning of the musical. As justification for the story’s framing device (listening to a story inside a child’s bedroom), Collins adds a brief scene between a young girl and her maid before the first musical number starts that slows the piece down; it’s a rare moment, in the otherwise tight production, that Collins spoon-feeds the message to the audience.

Once the musical gets past this scene, the performance moves along at a brisk pace until intermission, when everything works out. Or does it?  Into to the Woods is no fairytale; wishes have real consequences. So, perhaps leave the really little ones at home, or be prepared to explain some things to the kiddos. I overheard the parents of a toddler discussing the implications of the Baker’s Wife and Prince Charming cheating on their partners with each other and the complicated nature of love as they exited the theater. Hearing that conversation alone was almost worth the price of admission.

Though the second act is not quite as exciting as the first, it contains some of the show’s finest emotional beats. This show provides no easy answers, and that’s exactly what makes it such an important show to see right now. We all have to make our own choices and decide what is right for ourselves; age-old adages, fairytales and the advice of our parents can only get us so far.

I would recommend you run to Into the Woods while you still can and catch a performance of the musical in the Arvada Center Mainstage Theatre, where it runs through Oct. 9.