THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by James Lapine
Noël Coward Theatre, 85-88 St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AP until January 9, 2027
This is a transfer of the hit production which ran for 6 months at the Bridge Theatre during which time it clocked up 11 Olivier nominations and won Best Musical Revival. Jordan Fein’s invigorating direction and Tom Scutt’s astonishing designs have survived the transfer to the smaller, proscenium arch stage and some top-drawer West End talent have joined in many of the key roles.
This was the second Sondheim-Lapine collaboration after their ground-breaking Sunday in the Park with George and typically for Sondheim, with each show he reinvented the musical theater form.
Bruno Bettelheim’s 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment brought Freudian psychoanalysis to bear on popular Fairy Tales and explored their importance for children’s development. Sondheim has rejected this often made link to his musical and attributed more of the ideas to Jung, but in any case they were all fishing in the same pond as he and James Lapine took a number of Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales – Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel – to explore ideas about moral consequences and human flaws and linked them all with the new characters of a Baker and his Wife who desperately want a child. A snarling neighborhood Witch offers to solve their fertility problem if they will deliver to her, within three days, Cinderella’s slipper, Red Riding Hood’s iconic red cape, Jack’s cow and a lock of Rapunzel’s golden hair. So, off they go into the woods. They do deliver, the wife becomes pregnant, and they live happy ever after …except they don’t.
In Act Two Sondheim and Lapine turn the whole thing on its head, and the characters must deal with the consequences of their actions; for one thing, Jack’s Giant is out for revenge. The tone shifts from merry light-hearted fare to one which explores, with incredible poignancy, such themes as grief, loss, growing up and accepting responsibility, and the individual’s responsibility to the community.
Sondheim’s extraordinary score (MD Alex Beetschen does wonders with Jonathan Tunick’s original orchestrations) is packed with songs which have regularly moved audiences but are not the easiest to sing. You need to master both the patter song as well as quartets or great aria like numbers, and impeccable diction is required to keep up with the deliciously erudite lyrics. This wonderful ensemble cast have all that in spades.
It’s almost impossible to single people out, but Kate Fleetwood’s Witch has gained even more depth and power from the first staging; it’s an astonishingly commanding and moving performance. There are some vocal stunners among the new cast too such as Simbi Akande’s intelligently droll Cinderella or Gracie McGonigal’s Little Red Ridinghood. The latter has impeccable comic timing, learns the important lesson that “nice is different than good” and is more ‘hood’ than enchanted forest in her demeanor – she’ll pull a knife on you in a second.
The piece is incredibly witty and there is some fantastic scope for comic turns. Julie Jupp is a delight as Jack’s long-suffering mother, as are the two Princes, Lucas Koch (Rapunzel’s Prince) and Matthew Seadon-Young (Cinderella’s), who get probably the best song, ‘Agony’, where they compete in self-absorption.
West End stars Laura Pitt-Pulford and double Olivier winner John Dagleish bring both vocal and dramatic heft to the Baker and his Wife, who must anchor the piece, and who are put through the moral wringer. They bring great warmth to it.
The incredibly talented young American director Jordan Fein is on a roll having won awards for Fiddler on the Roof and Oklahoma!(co-directed) and has done wonders with this evergreen classic. Intrinsic to its success are Tom Scutt’s designs, from the darkness of the enveloping foliage to the witty detailing of the individual costumes. Fein and Scutt’s loving attention to detail on every aspect, like a great mosaic, has produced a version that will be hard to surpass. They never shy away from the occasional darkness of the piece (there is no Disney cuteness) but also it is never cynical and is imbued in the end with a sense of hope, which is what we all need now.
