The Village Theatre, 2017

Music and Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim

Book: James Lapine

Director: Kathryn Van Meter

Costumes: Melanie Taylor Burgess

Lights: Alex Berry

Sound: Brent Warwick

“Visually, this Into the Woods is lovely, the set by Matthew Smucker so redolent of paper it almost smelled like a fairy tale tome” - City Arts

“From the first moments of the show, it is clear this is a world built on stories. Literally. The woods are made of the pages of the fairytales – floor, leaves, and branches all. Once the characters begin to travel through the woods, the set (designed by Matthew Smucker) rotates which puts the characters in a constant state of uncertainty. It adds an element of danger that is normally hard to depict onstage.” - Drama in the Hood

“The stage is made up of spindly, eerie trees with ladders for trunks and paper for leaves. In the center, a revolving turntable, designed with rocks and varying levels to convey the forest floor. The notion of using pieces of paper as leaves for the trees came from the folkloric “wish trees” of Eastern Asia and Great Britain. At a wish tree, people write down their wishes or leave other offerings in the hopes that their desires will be fulfilled. “The idea of the wishing tree grew into idea of these wishes as the foliage,” Smucker said. “The idea of wishes comes so directly out of the script. ‘I wish’ are the first and the last words of the show. It’s the idea that these wishes, these desires of the characters, are what the world is made out of.” In the second act, as the wishes of the characters begin to fall apart, Smucker explained that the stage becomes littered with the foliage of the trees, evoking a sense of winter to Act I’s summer. The “actors have to find their own way around, they no longer have this neat frame [of a fairy tale] around them.” - Bellevue Reporter

Production Photo Credits: Mark and Tracy Photography