Into the Woods, London review: Magical, overwhelming meta musical
Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim review and star rating: ★★★
Musical theatre can be self-referential, didn’t you know? Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine certainly do. Their Into The Woods maxes out on meta gameplay in this technically brilliant but at times baseless musical that can be terribly proud of itself.
A baker and his wife plunge into Tom Scutt’s endless-feeling set, which is in effect a handful of trees and some carefully placed reeds but feels immensely lush and escapist, in order to break the spell that forbids them from having children. They must venture into the woods to bring back four items: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold, says a familiar-looking witch, and Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk are along for the ride too (don’t ask).
Into the Woods: London return is technically spectacular
As for the music, it’s no surprise that Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood have whooping great belts; it’s all technically spectacular and the music relieving because, frankly, Lapine’s script is often mercilessly verbose, overflowing with narrative information about the side quests of each of the characters. By the end of the first act it appears to be a fun, big-hearted journey, and musically triumphant, and everyone gets what they wish for, babies are due and it’s all gravy – but there is a second act in which everything falls apart again when a new plot is introduced: a vengeful giant is on the loose.
I’d imagine the Venn diagram of Stephen Sondheim and Brothers Grimm fans is fairly robust, but the conceit starts to feel like intellectual masturbation by the second act. After all, the viewer has no cliffhanger to resolve after the interval, which itself feels longer than other shows (I don’t know if this was intentional, or if there was a production issue on the night I went in). Anyway, returning to my seat after a lengthy first act, and due to the fast-paced, sometimes overwhelming narrative, I was wearying of this forest-dwelling gang, a feeling I found hard to shake even with the arrival of the eventual fee-fi-fo-fum thuds of the worrisome vertically accomplished beast edging ever closer.
Tunes aren’t gripping
The other problem with Into the Woods is that there’s a lack of conventionally melodic pop songs to tide you over. The main refrain – into the wooooooodsssssss – is repeated a thousand times, and is unconventionally catchy, but not in the rewarding way of something more tuneful. The metaness bleeds through from the staging into the ballads: everyone’s belting something for the sake of musical theatre, darling, but perhaps when everyone’s belting, no one’s belting at all.
I don’t want to diminish the innovative brilliance of this expansive idea, which genuinely transports you somewhere fairytale-coded and magical looking. Call me Scrooge (one of a few fictional characters who doesn’t get a look in) but I suppose you could argue that the virtue of fairy tales is that they end quickly. There is energy and wonder here, though I left a little exhausted.
Into the Woods plays at the Noël Coward Theatre until 9 January 2027