Into the Woods Review: Do you believe in magic?

After the antlers and the wolf and the darkness and the knife, Little Red Riding Hood has learned a thing or two. In the first act of Into the Woods, while modeling a wolfskin coat, she shares her wisdom. Be prepared, she advises in I Know Things Now. Watch out for strangers. Stephen Sondheim’s dry words provide another maxim: Nice, Little Red concludes, is different from good.

True. But isn’t it wonderful when a work of musical theater is absolutely both?

Lear deBessonets superb production of Sondheim and James Lapine’s modern classic Into the Woods, which premiered at Encores! in May, traveled west and south to Broadway. Despite some cast changes, its humor, wonder and humanity arrived intact. Indeed, they may shine even brighter at the St. James Theater than they did at the City Center. So if you’ve seen this recent staging, should you go back to the woods? Unless your budget doesn’t match Broadway prices, of course you should. To put it another way: wishes come true, not for free.

A pastiche of half a dozen fairy tales by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, Into the Woods debuted at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego in 1986 and on Broadway the following year. It had a respectful Broadway revival, directed by Lapine, in 2002, and an awkward stint in Shakespeare in the Park in 2012. Disney adapted it into a nice, somewhat empty live-action movie in 2014. decades it has remained a favorite among high school drama clubs, although many of these clubs only stage the first act, when happily ever after seems possible.

As Sondheim and Lapine knew, a happy ending depends on where you end the story. Turn enough pages and death makes its appearance, disillusionment too. Perhaps it sounds like a dark lesson from a show with Cinderella (Phillipa Soo), Jack the Giant Killer (Cole Thompson), and Little Red Riding Hood (Julia Lester) among its lead characters. But if you read those original tales again, they get pretty dark. Of Sondheim’s works, only Sweeney Todd has a comparable body count. Yet somehow his tone is hopeful.

A work of dizzying playfulness and moral seriousness, Into the Woods opens the way from innocence to experience. He asks his characters (survivors, anyway) to trade the childhood narcissism of wanting, wanting, for a more nuanced ethical framework that emphasizes interdependence. That’s the message of the show’s heartbreaking ballad, no one is alonethat Sondheim articulated even more directly in a 1991 PBS interview. We are all responsible for each other, he said.

The mood at the St. James on a recent evening did not, however, suggest deep moral inquiry. And judging by hats worn indoors, masks not worn at all, and at least one surreptitious phone camera, everyone assigned responsibility a little differently. So what were the vibes? Pleasure, anticipation, celebration. When the lights came on, the crowd screamed and screamed and screamed. I was expecting panties or given the source material, the occasional dance slipper to throw on stage.

Directed by DeBessonets, refined but little retouched by the Encores! exit, only use a wide staircase and a sunken strip in front of them. The set, designed by David Rockwell, with storybook lighting by Tyler Micoleau, sketches a forest in the simplest terms descending from the trunks of birches, a rising moon. Behind the actors sit the musicians, led by the precious Rob Berman. If your eye should wander away from the actors a big if you can watch them perform the chiming score, the magic made visible.

If the style of the productions is minimal, it is never austere and on this mostly blank canvas, deBessonet, aided by the playful choreography of Lorin Latarros, paints in rich and abundant tones. Benevolence is the watchword of deBessonet’s work, as evidenced by his numerous public works productions. A recognition of shared humanity, too. Here, it seems to extend everywhere, to the actors as well as to the public. I have rarely seen a series in which the actors had so much fun. In the case of Gavin Creel, who rode on the second verse of Any Moment and kind of covered up by kissing his co-star Sara Bareilles, arguably too much fun. Everywhere there is a feeling of generosity that only occasionally turns into indulgence. And honestly, some of that indulgence (as in Agony, sung in bits by Creel and his co-Prince, Joshua Henry) is joy, too.

Flawless performance as the Bakers Wife has only grown, like a bean, since the Encores! production. Best known as a singer-songwriter and songwriter on Waitress, she most recently established herself as a comedic actress on Girls5Eva. Here his comedy both widened and deepened. While she and Neil Patrick Harris had wild and edgy chemistry at Encores!, she’s now partnered with the sweeter Brian dArcy James. Together, they find beautiful rhythms in the roles of a married couple who are just beginning to know each other.

Soo, a shimmering soprano who can make every emotion as legible as celestial writing, gracefully replaces Dene Benton. (Benton replaced her in 1812’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet when it moved to Broadway; fair fair.) And Patina Miller, replacing Heather Headley, renders the witch with fierce and dangerous glamour, trading in the initial restraint of Headley against more fiery shades. . That night, puppeteer Kennedy Kanagawa was ill, but his understudy, Cameron Johnson, was a capable shepherd for Jacks’ buddy, Milky White. This cow still kills. And the children’s choir disappeared. Thank God.

In the second act, I worried, although worry is too strong a word, that maybe this production had become too funny, too light. The devastation of the second act didn’t flatten me like it did two months ago. But really, who wants to flatten right now? Instead, this show values ​​resilience, connection.

In the end, once Soo trilled the last ambivalent syllables, the audience jumped to their collective feet. The actors bowed, curtseyed and smiled. The rest of us clapped and clapped.

No one was alone.

In the woods
Through August 21 at the St. James Theatre, Manhattan; www.inthewoodsbway.com. Duration: 2h45.