Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom - okay, it's Rodey Theatre, so it's not that far away - three houses were filled with people given to merriment and music.
In the first house lived The Little Cinder Girl, an optimistic young lass who suffered under the tormenting of her cruel stepmother, two mean stepsisters and one ambivalent daddy.
In the second house lived Jack the Giant Killer, a goofy - sorry, "touched" - boy who loved his dear cow Milky White more than anything. He and his mother lived sparingly in their humble home.
In the third house lived and worked Jack the baker and his wife, a childless couple left to do little more than serve up bread and confectionery to hyperactive whelps like that overly enthusiastic chick who wears a red hood.
This enchanted kingdom makes for the setting of "Into the Woods," Stephen Sondheim's innocuous-seeming play featuring fairy tale archetypes and the worlds in which they exist. Nona Lloyd of New York directs this whirlwind of song and wit with excellent results.
Much of the jokery in the play's first half results from the audience's knowledge of well-worn stories such as "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Cinderella," et cetera, ad infinitum. Sondheim's script deftly turns each two-dimensional character on its head. Yet, the real magic in this work comes from each character's reputation beyond Sondheim's tweaks. Cinderella's newly discovered fickleness works perfectly, for example, as does the bubbly nature of Red Riding Hood, captured to hilarious results here by Desiree Sanchez.
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Some things, of course, are better left unchanged. With all of these goody-goody types, potential heroes and mysterious forests lurking about, can it be long before we meet a witch? Of course not! Like all successful baddies of stage and screen, the witch of "Woods" is a scenery-chewing bad-ass infinitely more fun than the so-called good guys. Laurie Finnegan blows audiences away as she fills this role exquisitely.
The first act in general is such an exercise in hilarity - anyone who doesn't muster at least a chuckle for Billy Smith's codpiece-wearing wolf has got to be comatose - that audiences returning from intermission must wonder "how can they top this?"
Well, before you can say "danger - deconstruction zone ahead," you're cruising at full speed in the middle of one. After breathing life into these characters, Lloyd and company then set about taking them apart piece by piece. What results is not merely some fine acting - especially of note in this set is Megan McCormick's suddenly sultry Baker's Wife - but a frankly disturbing bit of theater more reminiscent of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" than any Disney bit you're ever likely to see.
For a handful of catchy tunes, a bunch of clean laughs and one rock-solid production, check out "Into the Woods," which runs until Dec.1 at 7:30 p.m. You may just live happily ever after.
