For the last couple of years I’ve watched Derek Van Barham, a fast-rising directing talent in Chicago-style musicals, do his capable, innovative thing with second-tier material in the basement of Wicker Park’s Chopin Theatre, a magical, sacred theater space among those of us with a long memory.
Finally, and not before time, he’s decided to work on a masterpiece and the results are thrilling indeed.
The show in question is Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods,” a show that hardly needs much further introduction here. Superficially, it’s a droll mash-up of fairy tales like “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Little Red Riding Hood. ” For anyone willing to look closer, it’s a show about parenting and being parented, surviving both loss and betrayal and a meditation on the importance of taking risks, especially when it comes to falling in love.
Every time I review “Into the Woods” (and there was just a Broadway revival and national tour, not to mention a big Paramount Theatre production in Aurora last year), I think of an old advertisement the Marriott Theatre used to take out in a local publication to benefit Season of Concern, then an AIDS-related charity. All it contained was a quote from one of the lyrics: “Sometimes people leave you, halfway through the wood. … But no one is alone.” Indeed not, although it sure can feel that way at times.
I could go on and on in that realm, of course. This review is being written by a guy with Milky White the cow in eyeshot on his bookshelf.
Such fandom for a piece is dangerous for a critic; one is more apt to obsess about what falls short. But in this case, Von Barham and his musical director, Nick Sula, have come up with a fabulous way to root their basement show: two grand pianos in the center of the playing space, with two women, Ariana Miles and Evelyn Ryan, tinkling the keys, doing folly-like experiments with the physical pianos and, frankly, becoming the mutual stars of the show. Audience members are seated around the pianos, some theater-style, some at tables, all illuminated by a low ceiling’s worth of twinkling lights, courtesy of designer G. Max Maxin IV, who built this rich and organic environment.
As far as I know, Sula and the pianists re-orchestrated Sondheim’s score this way themselves: I certainly have never seen “Into the Woods” scored for two pianos. And despite wracking my brain, I also can’t remember seeing a musical in Chicago where what is the traditional exit music (played as the audience leaves the theater) becomes the final number. The cast members simply take their bows and then surround the pianos as the pianists finish their job — to great roars of approval on the night I was there. Only thereafter do the doors open.
That huge reaction came, I think, because of how emotionally invested these two musicians appear in the show itself, feeling and living the bones of the score and also willing on the actors, including (on the night I was there) understudy Jackson Mikkelsen, whose Jack was profoundly moving. I felt much the same way about Madison Kauffman’s Cinderella (Kauffman reminds me of Christine Sherrill, now a Broadway actor), Kevin Webb’s The Baker (“No More” is superbly done) and Sonia Goldberg’s The Baker’s Wife. I think Stephanie Stockstill, who has a major voice, needs to dial it back and simplify her work a tad as The Witch. But that’s a minor quibble. This very young cast of 12 (the doubling is very clever) also includes witty work from August Forman as the narrator and the sparking Anna Seibert as Little Red.
This isn’t a concert-style staging and nor is it a copy of the Broadway revival; it’s quite different. But it’s still a very intimate experience that comes with a full appreciation of how the stakes in a good “Into the Woods” have to be life and death. We all know our giants in the sky and all worry about them.
Happily, and a rarity in this town, the run is long. You have time. As they say in the show, “the difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Into the Woods” (4 stars)
When: Through Dec. 22
Where: Chopin Studio Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.
Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Tickets: $45-$55 at kokandyproductions.com
