On Friday it was time to again venture INTO THE WOODS!
Angela, Owen and I ventured into a land far far away called Clapham to visit the Landor Theatre (cunningly concealed above the Landor pub!) to see Stephen Sondheim's musical which takes some classic fairy tale characters and explores the themes of love and loss, cause and effect and if you can ever be Happily Ever After.

After showing that Sondheim's spectacular FOLLIES could be scaled down to the small 60-seater space, director Robert Mcwhir here tackles the usually effects-heavy show and showed what a little imagination and a large amount of brio can accomplish. While not as successful as FOLLIES overall it was still an effective staging especially as the cast numbered18! There were times you couldn't get a pin between them - or us.INTO THE WOODS has a special place in my heart - 21 years ago it was the first musical I ever saw on Broadway and have relived the production a few times thanks to the dvd of the original cast which was filmed for television. Sadly Bernadette Peters and Joanna Gleason had left the production by the time I got round to seeing it but their delicious performances as The Witch andThe Baker's Wife are both immortalised on the DVD.

Since then I have seen the original 1990 London production at the Phoenix which was a bit of a mess despite fine performances from Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton and Ian Bartholomew as well as the 1998 Donmar revival with memorable performances by Sophie Thompson as The Baker's Wife and a young Sheridan Smith as Red Riding Hood.

The show has proved popular with am-dram companies but I have noticed an upswing in professional productions recently with a couple of regional productions currently playing in America and it has just been announced that it will be part of the Regents Park season next year - bit of a no-brainer there! As I watched the production on Friday it occurred to me that a reason for the sudden interest in the show is possibly because it resonates so well with a post-911 world.

The second half pulls the carpet from under the audience & character's feet with the arrival of a threat from beyond which wreaks death and destruction. The widow of the Giant killed by Jack appears and is demanding revenge and justice - and she doesn't care who she kills to get it. The characters are thrown into confusion and fear - do they surrender Jack to make the terror stop or do they attempt a stand? Or just find someone to blame? It is easy to see how there has always been speculation as to how much Sondheim was responding to the emergence of the AIDS epidemic.
Nina Morley's witty Landor set features oversize children's books which are used as to clamber in, around and out of by the energetic cast and her costumes certainly tick all the fairy-tale boxes. The cast are mostly fine with one or two dodgy turns but I enjoyed Leo Andrew as The Baker, Sarah Head as The Baker's Wife, Sue Appleby as a rather mature Cinderella, Michael Eio as a suitably gauche Jack, Luke Fredericks was great fun as Rapunzel's Prince, Rebecca Wicking was a lethal Red Riding Hood and Judith Paris made a memorable wicked Stepmother.

Lori Haley Fox has been imported from MAMMA MIA on Broadway to play The Witch but she was no where to be seen on Friday so we had Orla Mullan instead. She certainly looked great when transformed from a hag to a glamorous-but-powerless sorceress but sadly she sang all the songs in a note-for-note copy of Bernadette Peters on the original cast recording. If she had brought her own interpretation to the role she might have been better.

Despite all the quibbles, this was a great opportunity to see a favorite musical "in the flesh" again and recommend it - if you can get a ticket!