Artistic Director’s Message
This piece, like all great works, has at its centre profound insights into the intractable and complex realities of our human experience, expressed on the language of fable – on one level communicating with folkloric immediacy, on another exploring the darker significance of fairy tale situations often altered by the random and unexpected – like the sudden death of the cow Milky White and the changing romantic allegiances of the Princes. This is the second part of Victorian Opera’s Sondheim trilogy, which began so auspiciously last year with Sunday in the Park with George. Bruno Bettelheim’s The Use of Enchantment, a 1976 book in which the now controversial author analysed traditional fairy tales in Freudian terms, provided a useful point of departure for Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine in their great work for the stage. However, Into the Woods is far more than a one dimensional re-rendering of fairy tales with a Freudian flavour. It uses a theatrical process of exploring ambiguity, to create everchanging horizons of meaning. Continually shifting perspectives on the well known characters of Grimm’s fairy tales reveal many possibilities, contradictions and ironies which succeed each other in the dazzling variety of the plot and its apparently zany causality.
Sondheim and Lapine have represented life in its glorious complexity, frequent abnormality and moral ambiguity. Indeed, “Sometimes the things you wish for are not to be touched”, “The prettier the flower, the further from the path”, and also – “nice” is not the same as being “good”. At the conclusion of the evening we can certainly grow into a new understanding of the line “Isn’t it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not.” This is a piece of ensemble theatre – in the capable hands or our great team of ensemble artists – each an individual gem, yet able to sparkle as a brilliant constellation of jewels masterfully assembled. Casting the light on this constellation is our talented creative team. Please remember that “even flowers have their dangers” – but still enjoy. - Richard Mills, Artistic Director
Richard Mills / ARTISTIC DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE