Despite strong production, 'Into the Woods' suffers from poor script

Into The Woods isn't easy to explain.

It's billed as a mixture of fairy tales. Yes, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (of Beanstalk fame) and Rapunzel get together; their respective stories are intertwined and their relationships are explained.

But it's more than that.

The first act ends predictably: Cinderella and Rapunzel each have their princes, Red Riding Hood has skinned the wolf and Jack has the goose with golden eggs and the magic harp. The end . . . right?

Wrong.

Act Two gets into what happens after we close the book at night, when the kids are already tucked in. And the stories start to stray from the familiar.

Remember when Jack killed the giant by chopping down the 'stalk? Well, apparently he left a widow. She returns seeking vengeance for the death of her husband, laying ruin to the kingdom in an attempt to flush out Jack.

There's more: adultery (three counts of it), lies, seduction and mortality are all thrown into the mix. In effect, it's an effort to introduce "real life" into the fairy tales.

And it almost succeeds.

The University Resident Theatre Company production does succeed in its staging and acting; the URTC has continued its string of strong performances here. But there's only so much they can do with the script.

Despite its star pedigree, the reason the show doesn't quite work is because that is the way it was written.

Steven Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book) have worked together before. Their collaboration on Sunday in the Park with George earned them a Pulitzer Prize for drama. They aren't amateurs, but they're not, um, out of the woods yet.

The first act ends too neatly. If all the stories are already told, why should the audience come back?

Resolution aside, the songs are marvels of writing, dazzling with internal rhyme and alliteration. This has the unfortunate side effect of making them hard to understand -- by the time you've digested the first verse, the second is well underway. And three hours is a long time to digest anything.

That's not to say that the actors and singers don't shine through. Jenny Liebowitz plays the wicked witch to perfection, at turns comic and horrific. The princes, Michael J. Dumin and Mark Light-Orr, are hilarious -- their duet, "Agony," is the show's comic highlight. Heather Kaye as Milky White (the cow) is also surprisingly good at physical comedy.

The orchestra plays well, the scenes are lush and the lighting and visual effects are well done, too. And certainly, Sondheim and Lapine have created an intriguing work. But Into the Woods wasn't even a hit on Broadway when it started its run in 1987. Yes, the lyrics are wonderful and the music is beautiful. It's almost as though the show doesn't work because it's too well crafted.

Into the Woods attempts to make fairy tales meet real life. Tragically, it falls victim to its own message:

Not every story has a happy ending.

Into the Woods runs until Saturday at The Playhouse.