Come Into The Woods at Venture Theatre

Opening night for Venture Theatre's production of Sondheim's Into The Woods was Friday, July 15th. Done entirely by high school kids, I thought this was really well done. In fact I forgot they were kids. All were good and they were well-matched too. Unfortunately, Mr Sondheim does not follow the rule of making the 2nd act half as long as the 1st, but that is not the players' fault.

The play is a conglomeration of various bits and pieces of the Brothers Grimm with more than a touch of Monty Python, together with occasional Saturday Night Live cameos. The parts usually doubled were all taken by different kids. Our pre-teens thought it was pretty good. According to Wikipedia there is a junior version of this available but I doubt that this was made easier. The singers were good. The show was well-directed and a few gaffes were laughed off by all.

I don't have the names of the main players because I forgot to take my playbill home with me. Trust me, it's worth seeing and hearing.

The picture on the left is from walking down Montana Ave from the Rex, which restaurant seems to have gone down hill in the last few years.

The poster above right is from the original Broadway production, borrowed from the Wikipedia entry.

It opened in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and then moved to Broadway in 1987.

Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment may have been the inspiration for some of the scenes, though Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch was probably not inspired by Bettelheim.