The nearly 40-year-old musical Into the Woods, with music and lyrics by the legendary Stephen Sondheim and book by American playwright James Lapine, has become a staple on North American stages. Its appeal is clearly linked to an ingenious amalgamation of familiar characters from classic fairy tales like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. Their stories are utilised to deliver a universal message that boils down to “be careful what you wish for”. Koerner Hall has assembled a cast which includes the crème de la crème of Canadian musical theatre in a smartly-staged production by Richard Ouzounian. But all of this talent cannot hide the work’s intrinsic flaws.
Cast of Koerner Hall’s Into the Woods. Photo: RCM/Lisa Sakulensky
Into the Woods gives almost equal weight to at least seven or eight of its leads. As a result, the audience’s emotional investment is divided in many directions. Even nominally secondary characters like Jack’s Mother and Rapunzel’s Prince are given prominence. When Jack unleashes the wrath of the Giant’s Wife, several characters meet untimely deaths. However, given how many other narratives we’ve been following, it’s difficult to empathise with their tragic fates. Similarly, the offstage deaths of Red Riding Hood’s mother and grandmother apparently deeply affect the young girl, but do not register emotionally.
Sondheim wrote a complex score that includes multiple big ensemble numbers, quickly paced patter and lyrical (if not entirely memorable) melodies. Into the Woods was composed for a full pit orchestra, which have become rarer to encounter in the current age of reduced or pre-recorded orchestrations on Broadway. But Koerner Hall delivered on this account thanks to student musicians from its own prestigious Glenn Gould School and the University of Toronto. Under experienced musical theatre conductor Paul Sportelli, these musicians delivered all the score’s original richness and ingenuity.
Cast of Koerner Hall’s Into the Woods. Photo: RCM/Lisa Sakulensky
It’s a tribute to Ouzounian, Genny Sermonia’s inventive choreography, Ellie Koffman’s contemporary costumes and Arun Srinivasan’s atmospheric lighting that we didn’t miss the lack of sets. This artistic team utilized comparatively simple means involving a box, some chairs and clever miking to conjure up visions of a growing beanstalk, booming giants and the creepy woods. The program notes that instead of the original production’s medieval fairy tale costumes, they “looked around…to encompass as much of the GTA, vintage 2024…[to]see your friends and neighbours on that stage.” The outfits seemed to invoke a more generic contemporary look rather than anything Toronto-specific, but were successful in establishing key identities as with Little Red’s crimson hoodie.
Sara Farb (Witch) in Koerner Hall’s Into the Woods. Photo: RCM/Lisa Sakulensky
With such a large, talented cast, it’s difficult to single out individual performers for fear of slighting others. However, Sara Farb as the Witch cannot be ignored. It must be said, she is probably gifted with the most fully-fleshed-out character. In numbers like “Stay with Me” and “Lament”, she mined all the complexity of the fractured relationship with her daughter, Rapunzel. Farb demonstrated a mastery of her vocal instrument, pointing the text with emotional intent. Another standout was Robert Markus as Cinderella’s Prince and the Wolf. Whether preening and shaking his golden mane, or two-timing Cinderella with the Baker’s Wife (and possibly Sleeping Beauty?), Markus was always on point with his comic delivery and pristine diction.
Central to the story is the Baker and his Wife’s quest to gather the objects the Witch requires to reverse the curse that prevents them from having a child. Mike Nadajewski and Gabi Epstein were outstanding in these roles. Epstein was especially winning as she comically weighed the pluses and minuses of her extramarital tryst with the Prince. Tess Benger offered a lovely, fully integrated soprano as Cinderella, who in this version is clearly having mixed thoughts about the Prince from the start. Heeyun Park grabbed all the opportunities as Red Riding Hood, no victim here, but instead, a lethal wolf-killing machine.
Cast of Koerner Hall’s Into the Woods. Photo: RCM/Lisa Sakulensky
Veteran actors Eric Peterson and Fiona Reid brought all their collective experience to the Narrator/Mysterious Man and Jack’s Mother/Giant. Peterson’s side stage interjections were a little hard to discern at first, an acoustical problem that ebbed and flowed throughout the performance. Reid was quite awesome in her secondary Giant role where we could see her emoting into a voice-enhancing mic from the rear stage orchestra.
Koerner Hall has a nice tradition of giving roles in their Sondheim productions (Follies, 2021 and A Little Night Music, 2023) to young singers from the Glenn Gould Studio. Here, recent graduate Elena Howard-Scott floated some ethereal sounds as Rapunzel and current student, Emma Pennell, effectively evoked Cinderella’s Mother in her brief, but ear-grabbing moment.
Ultimately, we need to be thankful to Producer Mervon Mehta and the Royal Conservatory of Music for taking on these ambitious, (almost) annual stagings of the great Sondheim musicals like Into the Woods. In the current, extremely volatile theatre environment, it’s gratifying to see organizations taking risks and pulling out all the stops for Toronto musical theatre lovers.
There’s one remaining performance of Koerner Hall’s Into the Woods on Dec. 31 at 3 pm
