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?