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At the beginning of the Inferno, Dante's narrator speaks of finding himself lost at middle age "in a dark wood"; in Maurice Sendak's picture book Where the Wild Things Are young Max, after spying his mother kiss a man who is not daddy, finds himself surrounded by all manners of mythic-like beasts, and in a way becomes one, too. Transformation links both these stories, separated by six hundred years and set apart by Freudian theory. Add music and lyrics, and one has the magnificent Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical Into the Woods, an adult fairy tale in which the forest of the unconscious hides the beasts within us that we meet at our own risk.

Freud is linked to Grimm in Into the Woods: such well-known tales as that of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and the Baker and His Wife are interwoven with an all-inclusive Wicked Witch and connected by a blonde-haired, British speaking narrator with vines threading outwards from his costume. The music is lithe and invigorating; the lyrics are as technically demanding as they are intellectually commanding. How Sondheim and Lapine find darkness in already dark woods without yielding to the unbidden rule to entertain is one more miracle of this show, one of Sondheim's most abstract musicals yet one of his most fulfilling.

The Kansas City Repertory Theatre's presentation of Into the Woods under guest director Moisés Kaufman's God-like execution, which opened September 18^th at the Spencer Theatre, brings to light the show's bedazzling interplay between the story and the songs. It is not too high praise to say that the intermission is needed so the audience can catch its breath for the second act which builds to its famous finale. Kaufman has cast wisely: many of the performers have worked in Sondheim's productions on Broadway or in national tours, though all of them register in their characters as snugly as their colorful costumes fit them (courtesy of Clint Ramos). The Spencer stage is, as Goldilocks would say, just right. The sets, by Narelle Sissons, fill the area like Rousseau paintings come to life, with a child's bedroom configured in the middle of the stage surrounded by tall trees that come and go; in the opening number "Prologue: Into the Woods," some characters (like Riding Hood, the show-stopping Dana Steingold) make their entrances through a C.S. Lewis-like open closet. Trees ascend and characters descend, just as they sometimes disappear below the stage floor. Indeed, with Japhy Weideman's sharply etched lighting, the collective staging recalls one of the Metropolitan Opera's sweeping productions.

 The first act first presents the characters' problems and then finds their happy endings--or so we assume. The Baker (Zachary Prince) and his Wife (Brynn O'Malley) wish to have a child, but some spell on their house by the Witch (Michele Ragusa) prevents them. Cinderella (Lauren Worsham) has her familiar story, as does Jack (KC Comeaux) whose mother (Tina Stafford) insists he sell his one friend, his cow (whose mechanical facial reactions are worked by the great puppeteer Paul Mesner). The songs--"Cinderella at the Grave," "Maybe They're Magic," "Hello, Little Girl," the last sung to Riding Hood by the Wolf (Claybourne Elder)--gradually reveal the sadness and the uncertainty behind the characters' adventures. Sondheim's songs, routinely at odds in what they mean versus how buoyantly they are sung, gradually take over the stories. By the end of the first act, the Wolf is dead and Riding Hood is safe, the Baker and his Wife have followed the Witch's commands and been given a son; Cinderella, Rapunzel and the rest all seem happy, and the Witch is transformed into an evening-gowned socialite. Yet the ensemble song "Ever After" rings hollow. This is, after all, Sondheim, not the therapeutic-lite Shrek or even Wicked.

The ritual Sondheimesque twist comes in act two, as the assembled fairy-tale characters begin to doubt their happiness. The second half perversely reprises the first, in the manner of an earlier (still more conceptual) Sondheim-Lapine musical, Sunday in the Park with George. Jack's descent from the beanstalk (which caused the death of the giant, so that his angry widowed giantess begins to trample the countryside), in a neat psychoanalytic metaphor, sets off everyone else's descent into guilt and mutual recrimination. It is the other boot coming down on the guilty and the innocent alike, reminiscent of the last-act barber's killings in Sweeney Todd, in which victims are murdered indiscriminately and Mrs. Lovett sends them down the chute, merrily singing all the while.

The unfailing coldness of the musical's unfolding--one senses had Sondheim written, say, The Sound of Music the von Trapp family would have been massacring Nazis while singing "Edelweiss"--is elemental to Sondheim's style. The opening notes, those three piano chords played with insistent march-like determination, announce the show's tone. But it is always a treat to hear the various song threads diverge and combine and recombine, with performers singing over one another; yet, if done right, heard just precisely enough to draw together the emotions rather than spread them apart. Sondheim's songs are composed more like logarithms than with lyrics. The technical unwinding in songs like "First Midnight" and "No One is Alone" demands that the actors truly work together. Their expressiveness in finding the heart of these songs is the key to unlocking the ardency hidden within. For few other composers in any medium can reach so far into themselves, in short pithy rhymes or in soaring ballads. As dark as Into the Woods is, it ends on a note of pessimistic optimism.

For the Rep's production, Moisés Kaufman has reinterpreted the show here and there (he turns one verse of one of the Witch's solos into a rap version that is unnecessary but adds a contemporary touch, and makes up for the Wolf just like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine) without meddling overall. On Broadway, the Witch was the star (Bernadette Peters, Vanessa Williams); here, an ensemble feel makes all the characters compelling. If certain performers stand out more, such as Cinderella's Prince whom Claybourne Elder plays with a nod to Steve Martin's comic vanity and Brynn O'Malley whose Baker's Wife's sadness is sung so sweetly, the Opening Night audience fell completely under the sway of Dana Steingold. Her Riding Hood is petite, tough-minded, and seems to be not merely singing the songs but singing them for the first time. Steingold's timing is Rolex-perfect. It is one of the theatre's magic nights when an audience meets an unknown performer and knows something special is happening. All the wild things in the dark forest remain by the show's end: but for the moment, at least, they are banished from the theatre.

REVIEW
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Into the Woods
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by James Lapine
Directed by Moisés Kaufman
Runs September 11-October 4 (reviewed September 18)
NOW EXTENDED thru October 11
Spencer Theatre at UMKC
4949 Cherry St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org


Top Photo:
Michele Ragusa (Witch), Lauren Braton (Rapunzel)

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups.