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Little The Witch (Thursday Farrar) and the cast of Into the Woods
Into the Woods

Book by James Lapine
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

September 13 – October 8, 2006
Margeson Theater

Click here for Reviews

One of Sondheim’s most popular works, this delightful Tony Award-winning musical weaves the tales of Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, the Baker and his Wife, the Wolf, and the Giant and the Witch into one rich tapestry of music, love, laughter and the thrill of going into the woods.

ANNOUNCEMENT: 9/17/06
SUNDAY MATINEE CANCELLED: Due to an injury sustained to one of our actors, Sunday's 2pm (9/17/06) show was cancelled. Patrons of the Saturday Gala (9/16) and the Sunday 2pm Sunday performance are asked to hold on to their tickets and redeem them for another performance by calling the Shakespeare Festival box office. Regular performances will resume on Wednesday 9/20 and continue through our scheduled closing on October 8th. 

BUY ONLINE TICKETS

Or Call the Box Office
407-447-1700 x 1 - Mon-Fri 10am-5pm

Little Red Riding Hood (Lissa Mason) and the Wolf (Stephen Lane)

Show Information

Wednesdays, Thursdays at 7:00PM;
Fridays, Saturdays at 8:00PM;
Sundays at 2:00PM

Tickets: 9/13 and 9/14 Preview Nights - $15;
Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays - $33, $28, $23;
Fridays, Saturdays - $38, $33, $28; 9/20 and 9/27
2PM Senior Matinees – all seats $15;
Students save $5;
Groups 10+ save up to 20%

Opening Season Grand Gala: 9/16.

Part of the AmSouth Bank Signature Series

Production Sponsor

Presenting Sponsors

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Jack's Mother (Anne Hering) and the Baker's Wife (Heather Lee Charles)

Cast Information

Reviews

Exuberant, Terrific, Lovely!!

The Orlando Sentinel
Excerpts from the Review by Elizabeth Maupin

Look at Into the Woods, the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's exuberant musical revival, as a personality test. If the happy-go-lucky first act is up your alley, then this benign introduction to the musicals of Stephen Sondheim may be all you need to know. But if the deeper and more devastating second act is more to your liking, then there's a whole world of Sondheim waiting for you.
Pictured at left: Prince Charming (David Kelley)

In this musical based on mostly familiar fairy tales, Sondheim and librettist James Lapine play bait and switch: They get you hooked on the frivolous first act, and then happily-after-after turns out to be way more than you thought.Fortunately, the Shakespeare Festival's production hits on both counts, with frivolity enough for the most frivolous in the audience and a deep and emotional catharsis for everybody else... its pizzazz and its passion will take you far.

Choose almost any of the characters in this interweaving of tales mostly spawned by the brothers Grimm, and you'll find a treasure - an adorably goofy Jack of beanstalk fame (Robby Sharpe), a plucky and enlightened Cinderella (Tracy Ganem), a ferocious Little Red Riding Hood (Melissa Mason). Add the made-up story of the forlorn Baker (T. Robert Pigott) and his intrepid wife (Heather Lea Charles), who are so desperate to have a child that they find themselves willing to do whatever it takes.

Into the Woods takes its crowd-pleasing seriously in its long first act, when Sondheim and Lapine weave their stories until the characters are nearly all one big, sort-of happy family. There's plenty of whimsy to carry you along through the elaborate story-telling: The Baker loses his parents in a baking accident, a cow named Milky White (Liam Scahill) develops a fondness for the audience and a Mysterious Man (a wacky Kristian Truelsen) appears at opportune moments to confuse the characters all the more.
At right: Jack (Robbie Sharpe)

But comic confusion is all there is until the story turns dark, and it's this much-needed darkness that makes Into the Woods worth its while.The production is blessed with a mostly terrific cast of principals, from Sharpe's dim-witted, loose-limbed Jack and Mason's vehement Little Red to the two extravagant princes - Cinderella's (David Jachin Kelly, reminiscent of Kevin Kline at his dopiest) and Rapunzel's (Ariel Heller, hilariously overdramatic).

Ganem makes an expressive Cinderella and sings a lovely version of one of Sondheim's loveliest ballads, "No One Is Alone." Thursday Farrar finds a measure of comedy in the witch... And Pigott and Charles are a winsome couple as the baker and his wife - Charles brave and comically down-to-earth, Pigott the show's anguished heart.Truelsen and Anne Hering (as Jack's fed-up mother) are both swell in supporting roles.... Into the Woods is about wishing and getting what you wished for, about self-interest and community. That pretty much covers life.

Hit Orlando's WOODS!

Florida Today
From the blog of Pam Harbaugh

Got to the opening of "Into the Woods" at Orlando UCF Shakespeare Festival. Best production of this Sondheim musical I've ever seen. Best get tickets right now, though. They're already sold out for the first week, and once reviews hit, you'll be hard pressed to get two seats together.

OSF Brilliantly Spins Sondheim's Fairy Tale

The Orlando Weekly
By Al Pergande

Orlando-UCF Shakespeare opens its new season with a spectacular, complex and challenging production of Stephen Sondheim’s symbolic pseudo-fairy tale, Into the Woods. The woods are wild, but that’s where we must venture to grow and find answers.

The story begins with the stereotypical quests that fill Mother Goose and Le Morte D’Arthur. A curse dooms the Baker (T. Robert Pigott) and his wife (Heather Lea Charles) to a childless life until the neighboring Witch (Thursday Farrar) reveals the complicated recipe for successful impregnation. The curse derives from the Baker’s father, who deflowered the Witch’s garden years ago. Now the Baker must collect a blood-red cape, hair yellow as corn and a golden slipper from a girl whose mother is a living tree, then run all this through a milky-white cow. This nice mix of pagan and Christian rituals fertilizes the Bakers and returns the Witch to her youth while stripping her of supernatural power.

The quests of Jack for wealth, Cinderella for social status and Little Red Riding Hood for vengeance all turn to ashes, as they’ve now eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and been cast from the idyll of innocence into the struggle of adult life. Even the Narrator (Kristian Truelsen) dies, leaving behind the Mysterious Man. Alone and facing an attack by giants, everyone must find their own way as authority not only cannot be trusted but no longer even exists. It’s all pure Joseph Campbell, though it’s not essential to understand the academian’s theories on mythology and culture in order to enjoy this brilliant production.

There are nearly two dozen fairy tale characters in constant motion, led by the Witch and her LED-powered magic staff. When she loses the warts, she loses the supernatural powers, but she MIGHT still get ahead on looks alone. As Pigott’s boyish charm makes the Baker’s desire for fatherhood sincere, it also makes his fall into sin even more shocking. He does get a charming duet with his wife, “It Takes Two,” which is a highlight of the show, as well as the pivot that points us from the playroom to the boardroom.

Another strong performance comes from Robby Sharpe as Jack, who sings quite well for a simple-minded cowherd, and the audience loved his best friend, Milky White, the nonspeaking pantomime cow played by the uncredited Liam Scahill. Exceedingly tall Kristian Truelsen was impish and engaging as Narrator and Mysterious Man, and Melissa Mason stomps around emphatically as prissy Little Red Riding Hood.

As with most Sondheim shows, the music is well-written but requires concentrated thought to follow. Songs really do serve the plot rather than tickle the ear, but the best number by far was “Agony,” sung by the two princes of irresponsible imperial government, Ariel Heller and David Kelley. The second-act musical high point came with “Your Fault,” a classic paean to finger-pointing rendered by Jack, the Baker, LRRH, the Witch and Cinderella.

Rolling trees and moody lighting from designers Bert Scott and Joseph Oshry give the audience something to look at during the occasional set shifts, and the Giant’s arm crashing down in the second act was a fun surprise. There’s even a big laugh when the Wolf (Steven Lane) gets disemboweled and LRRH and her grandmother crawl out of the entrails.

With its mix of Christian and pagan motifs, Broadway music and folk tales, this lesson on adulthood isn’t just for grown-ups. Behind each story is an entire world of morals and values. No matter how happy you are ever after, come Monday you have to get up, put on a tie and act nice.

Where’s the magic in that?

Fairytale Favorites Sparkle in Musical

FLORIDA TODAY
BY PAM HARBAUGH

This complete story in Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods" is rarely expressed as clearly as it is in Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's captivating and crisp production. Before the lights dim, you see a bounty of beautiful fall leaves hanging like a bough along the top of a dark forest. The setting imparts a sense of peace and serenity. In fact, you can barely keep your eyes off Bert Scott's sumptuous design.

The musical begins and a community of fairy tale characters appear in Rebecca Baygents Turk's bevy of color-saturated costumes. Living at the edge of the woods, they sing how they "wish, more than anything, more than life," for a particular dream to come true so they can live happily ever after. Cinderella wants to go to the ball. The baker's wife wants a baby. The witch wants to become beautiful again.

But with minor keys rising into jarring crescendo in Sondheim's haunting music and lyrics, you know there will be an edge to these wishes come true. Yes, the wolf will have his belly filled with stones, and Cinderella's stepsisters will have their eyes plucked out by birds, but the edge gets sharper still.

Directed by Patrick Flick, the libretto and lyrics sparkle with humor and insight. He exploits his talented cast's natural comic mannerisms, juxtaposing them to moments of poignancy. And he gives the audience a nice theatrical surprise in a scene with the wolf dressed up as Granny.

Robby Sharpe is a cartoony joy as Jack. With his carrot-colored hair flouncing on the top of his head like some bizarre question mark, Sharpe cajoles his wondrous upstaging cow, Milky White, to move along toward the woods where they meet the baker who, in turns, gives Jack magic beans for the cow. Melissa Mason puts an appealingly nasty spin on Little Red Ridinghood. She doesn't merely move across the stage, she skips and prances and poses just so, all the while gobbling cookies and spurning the advances of the wolf.

Although portraying shallow and egotistical princely brothers, Ariel Heller and David Jachin Kelley manage to get the biggest laughs in their over-the-top schtick in "Agony," where they bemoan their fate of being in love. As the witch, Thursday Farrar finds a great well of humor and infuses her role with lyrical rhythm. She also delivers emotion as she implores her daughter, Rapunzel, to heed her motherly warnings in the song "Stay With Me." Rapunzel would have done well to do that, for the serene beauty of the woods soon becomes a setting for danger, filled with giants.

Faced with obstacles, the silly, self-centered characters begin revealing ignoble traits. They become liars, thieves and murderers. It's a bad ending for most of the characters. In fact, few survive. Yet push the story further, as done successfully with OSF's production, and a deeper truth is revealed: Reality is better than fantasy. Yes, "Into the Woods" has many funny moments, but what makes it resonant are characters confronting terror, death and sadness. They don't all get what they thought they wanted. But the ones who abide find a surprising peace and harmony.

In the end, it's winter. A soft snow falls. Characters shift. They form new alliances and understand what acceptance means. Life goes on. As they sing in the unforgettable refrain, "You are not alone, no one is alone." That sentiment remains with you long after the final curtain, proving the power of theater well done.

The Baker (Robbie Pigott) and the Baker's Wife (Heather Lee Charles)