Before Wicked, and before Everafter, there was Into The Woods, the original fractured fairytale. Sondheim created this mashup of childhood myths in 1987, the same year that William Goldman deconstructed fantasy worlds of ogres, wizards and Prince Charmings with The Princess Bride. It was the height of postmodernism, and bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
But the popularity of Into the Woods has never waned. It was done in Queen's College Garden within the last two years (in fact some of the cast of this Playhouse production are having their second bite at Sondheim's poisoned apple). The show is so clever and so satisfying, and it's there waiting for every adult who listened to fairy tales as a child, and needs them to grow up. It's like Shrek for intellectuals.
So how would Peach Productions, an Oxford theatre company with an (ironically) unimpeachable record, tackle this big, complex, technically demanding show? In the past they have mounted productions in the Pilch and the Burton Taylor: new writing with a couple of actors, sets costing 50 quid. Apart from the jump in scale to Oxford's largest venue, Into The Woods calls for outstanding singers, an entire orchestra, and giants. Actual f***ing giants. Surely director/producers Lydia Free and Luke Nixon would stumble with their first foray onto the forbidding acreage of the Playhouse stage.
Nope. This production is as sure-footed and stylish as its characters are bumbling and confused.
There are minor technical annoyances, the main one being the fact that the amplification creates an echo effect meaning it can, at times, be hard to understand the words - and understanding the words is crucial in this show. Sondheim is so twisty and self-referential, he's basically Tom Stoppard with tunes. The audience needs to be on its A-game just to keep up. The audibility isn't helped in the first ten minutes by having all the action take place behind a gauze, which bounces most of the actors' words right back at them. Producer Lydia Free is already fixing this, so no cause for alarm.
Counterbalancing the show's limitations, in fact completely eclipsing them, are the scale of this production, the vision of its conception, the wit and pace with which it flies off the stage, and the astonishing talent and commitment of its performers - both musicians and actor/singers.
It's rare for a student show to come up with a design that dominates the Playhouse stage, making it look like it was always meant to be in this space, but Into The Woods succeeds with a thrilling concept. Taking the narrator's powerful line 'No knot unties itself' as a starting point, designer Daisy Williams has conceived the Woods as a forest of knotted bedsheets, descending in varying formations to make different glades and thickets. Not only does it look breath-taking, but it delivers on the idea that, in this show, fantastical ideas have basic human beginnings.
This idea is on display even before the show starts, with the actors clearly visible on stage, not in character, just getting ready to perform. And it reappears near the end, when the musicians are revealed at the back of the stage, an orchestra ex machina. They're playing with the idea of where fiction ends and reality begins, and ultimately that's what this show is all about.
After a first half that sees characters from many a children's anthology (Jack, Cinders, Rapunzel, Prince Charming, Red Riding Hood et al) wander into the woods like a horde of lovers out of A Midsummer Night's Dream, bent on a witch's quest to give the Baker and his wife a child, the second half takes an outrageously dark turn. Reality hits hard as the happy-ever-afters find themselves stuck with spouses they can't stand and never-ending nappies to change. The joylessness of modern relationships is one of Sondheim's favourite themes, and marrying it with childhood fantasy is both unnerving and deeply satisfying.
Along the way, this production gifts us some glorious moments of pure theatre: Rapunzel letting down her hair is both stunning and hilariously ridiculous; the tableau of Jack finding the dead body of the Baker's wife is poignant and heart-breaking; the little birds who twitter around Cinderella stick an effective middle finger up at Disney; and the sound effects accompanying the (necessarily) disembodied giant are so convincing that each heavy footstep feels like a minor earthquake.
But all of this is secondary to a collection of musical performances that are so masterful, one has to wonder how it is possible for students at a university that doesn't teach any performing arts to reach such a level of accomplishment. Everybody is note-perfect. Eva Bailey as Cinderella and Eleanor Bogie as the Witch in particular vie to raise the Playhouse roof with their astonishingly powerful voices. But the show is nearly stolen from under their noses by Ben Gilchrist and Joe Basczak as the fairytale princes. Their performances of 'Agony' were, for me, the highlights of the evening, with their desperate love for their respective womenfolk hopelessly failing to conceal the burgeoning bromance that keeps bringing them together. Gilchrist also has some of the show's best one-liners (like 'I was raised charming, not sincere').
The singing does outperform the acting in this show. A little more pronounced physicality might serve to underline the trope-laden stories from which these characters emerge. Red Riding Hood might swing her bag like a carefree schoolgirl, Jack might drag his feet like a reluctant farmhand, the Witch's flailing staff might carry a little more threat. But this would be yet more icing on an already delicious cake.