Image cred­it: Maeve O’Con­nell.

Reviewed by Talia Carlisle

Not dis­sim­i­lar to the high fash­ion of the Met Gala, I adorned my best tiara and laven­der frock, ready to descend Te Auaha’s stairs to Witch Music Theatre’s Into The Woods. There isn’t a more mag­i­cal stair­case to a fairy­tale full of laugh­ter.

If the eye-catch­ing adver­tis­ing isn’t enough to draw your atten­tion, I can assure you the stun­ning imagery on their life-sized plac­ards across Welling­ton is just an appe­tis­er com­pared to the jaw-drop­ping per­fect­ed musi­cal cre­ation of this ambi­tious Stephen Sond­heim musi­cal brought to life by Witch Music The­atre.

When the hun­dreds of lights dimmed (all per­fect­ly placed to cap­ture each enchant­i­ng scene) I gasped out loud, intrigued by Kevin Orlando’s pow­er­ful open­ing nar­ra­tion and mys­ti­cal light­ing by Joshua Tuck­er — bring­ing us all into the fairy­tale with them.

Sparkling lights reveal the full impact of stage design­er Scott Maxim’s grav­i­ty-defy­ing for­est that invites every audi­ence mem­ber deep “into the woods”.

There we find beau­ti­ful com­radery between our love-struck princes (Jack­son Burl­ing and Glenn Hors­fall). They both have impec­ca­ble comedic tim­ing and phys­i­cal­i­ty in their danc­ing and flounc­ing towards the princess of their dreams.

Jack­son plays Cinderella’s Prince and is sneak­i­ly tal­ent­ed, dou­bling as the seduc­ing and sleazy Wolf who throws us into the pit of the play and fills our bel­lies with laughs and very fun gags that keep us enter­tained and intrigued through­out.

Our Cin­derel­la (Gayle Ham­mer­s­ley) is sweet, soul­ful… and stressed as she clear­ly does not have time for romance in her busy life com­pet­ing to exist along­side her obnox­ious­ly suf­fo­cat­ing yet style-abun­dant step sis­ters Lucin­da (tonight played by Tes­sa Dea­cle) and Florin­da (Mia Alon­so-Green).

The genius of direc­tor Nick Lerew shines through in his bril­liant cast­ing of every char­ac­ter, each with their own curat­ed com­e­dy style and phys­i­cal comedic ele­ments — many per­fect­ing these for mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters they under­study!

Jack’s friend, crowd favourite, and cow, Milky White (Felic­i­ty Coz­ens) walks onstage to an uproar of applause each time. Play­ing a cow isn’t the eas­i­est task but Milky suc­ceeds with absolute aplomb, many fun gags, and Met Gala-wor­thy cow fash­ion we can all learn from.

Milky’s own­er and friend, Jack, is played by Tara Can­ton who is a dream­er, a teen, unafraid of adven­ture or giants, but intim­i­dat­ed by his moth­er, played by the ener­getic and mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Paula Gar­dyne.

Every actor keeps us all intrigued through­out every skip to Granny’s, every tum­ble from Rapunzel’s tow­er, and every thun­der­ing foot­step of a giant. All of their tal­ents shine bright far above us with some notable high­lights in Greer Perenara’s per­fect witch cack­le, Jack­son Burling’s Wolf snarl, and Aria Leader-Fiamatai’s Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood skip, all com­ple­ment­ed with great direc­tion, a jaw dopping yet ver­sa­tile set, and soul­ful singing by all — but par­tic­u­lar­ly Emi­ly Yeap as a fiery Rapun­zel with the voice of an angel.

All of Sondheim’s clever lines were easy to absorb thanks to some clever and cre­ative sound mix­ing designed by Patrick Barnes, impec­ca­ble pro­nun­ci­a­tion and clear pro­ject­ing.

Every sin­gle part of the show is my favourite with some heart­felt bal­lads, and high-fash­ion thrown in by cos­tume design­ers Nadia New­man and Emma Stevens who did an incred­i­ble job to make sure every­one looked amaz­ing, not just great. And Wow, does every­body look good or what!

The best part is that no one is left out, every char­ac­ter shines, and most of all every­body is hav­ing a good time. A real­ly good time, to the point where off-stage staff are danc­ing along to their music at inter­vals, and Lucin­da actor Aimee Sul­li­van used her night off so she could watch the show!

The show has a mas­ter­ful smooth­ness to its process and exe­cu­tion. The sto­ry flows beau­ti­ful­ly util­is­ing Ed Blun­den as an enter­tain­ing Stew­ard, Joanne Lisik as Cinderella’s self-obsessed Step-moth­er and moth­er, and the fret­ful Bak­ers’ end­less search for mag­ic, (William Duig­nan and Aine Gal­lagher). Our fab­u­lous nar­ra­tor and Mys­te­ri­ous Man (Kevin Orlan­do) leads us with laugh­ter and con­vic­tion through the show’s twists and turns.

Some­times the sto­ry moves so fast it’s hard to keep up with why the char­ac­ters have dis­ap­peared or reap­peared, even though there isn’t that many — it just looks like it! But there is always more sto­ry, and some­how more char­ac­ters to come. I don’t know if Sond­heim is even keep­ing track, but seems a good enough excuse to come see it again so I’m pleased about that!

Since this sto­ry cov­ers the hap­py ever afters of these char­ac­ters and what hap­pens after that, what I would like to see next is a spin-off musi­cal star­ring Greer Per­e­nara. Or any­thing by Witch Music The­atre. But she real­ly is the most fun, wise and fab­u­lous witchy per­son­al­i­ty on stage that keeps the sto­ry track­ing, and uplifts the fash­ion in every room she is in.

I have a fun­ny the­o­ry that the pre­quel to this show is the Roy­al New Zealand Ballet’s pro­duc­tion of Romeo and Juli­et, also a famous sto­ry of love turned to chaos, unnec­es­sary fight­ing, mag­ic potions, death, and also on in Welling­ton this week at the St James The­atre.

Into The Woods is on until Sat­ur­day at Te Aua­ha on 65 Dixon St. You bet­ter get in quick before the mag­ic dis­ap­pears! What path will you take into the woods?