ONCE UPON A TIME
"Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood."
What a strange afternoon it was. By which I mean Thursday 8th September 2022.
Having started out the day confident in the belief that I didn't need an umbrella, I subsequently found myself harrassed by several stalking showers and tropical seeming downpours that resulted in me wearing a plastic shopping bag over my head in what became essentially a futile gesture amidst the deluge.
Bath, however, looked beautiful, its famous honey coloured bath stone rain washed, then blow dryed by the wind and finally warmed by the sun when it made its occasional appearance from behind the ominous looking storm clouds loitering in the sky.
Ducking into the Theatre Royal Bath to watch Terry Gilliam and Leah Hausman's new production of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods felt like a welcome escape from the volatile September weather. Is there a better, more cosy sense of sanctuary from a storm than an old theatre in the afternoon? I've yet to find one.
In this sense, the theatre is not unlike the woods themselves where you might be protected beneath a canopy of branches and leaves as you wait for the wild weather to abate. Perhaps that is why this new 2022 production of Into The Woods felt so especially immersive on this September afternoon in the rain.
The beauty of Sondheim and Lapine's masterpiece is that it manages to distil the pure essence of fairytales and pantomime and elevate them to the level of high art along with the operas of Mozart, Strauss and Wagner.
When "Once Upon A Time" was uttered by the mysterious man (Julian Bleach) on stage, the audience was immediately taken back to the land of fairytales which to many feels as familar as childhood.
And what did all those fairytales mean anyway? This seems to be the central premise of Into The Woods as Stephen Sondheim and his collaborator James Lapine set out to examine them in forensic detail in their bid to find out. Through their ingenious book, music and lyrics they seem to bring the underlying desires and wishes of archetypal characters such as the Baker, his Wife, Cinderella and a Witch (plus many more) to light in a way unmatched in modern times.
Aside from the genius lyrics with rhymes, double and triple, there is the gorgeous music that is like a sparkling fountain of melody all the way through the show, spinning many themes and motifs that get turned inside out, reversed and inversed by composer/lyricist Sondheim who plays with his musical score like a child with its toys.
Toys and puppetry feature as a dominant stage concept for Gilliam and Hausman's production with puppets, large flower pots and super sized tin cans (being used here as Rapunzel's tower) as well as a giant baby doll that dwarves the main characters on stage. Much of the set design and props for the production have been inspired by Benjamin Pollock's toy theatre designs which are available to view at Pollock's Toy Museum in London's Fitzrovia. There is also a shadowy sense of Victorian gothic that permeates the production, especially in the haunted pill box look of the mysterious man who narrates the bulk of the fairytales throughout the show, resembling a cross between Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Uncle Fester in The Addams Family.
The entire work itself is split into two distinct acts - Act One is Once Upon A Time which is self-explanatory and Act Two is Once Upon A Time ... Later exploring the ever after of the 'happily ever after' and all the consequences that take place beyond the traditional fairytale ending we've all grown accustomed to. It's a useful way of reminding the audience that life is far more uncertain and ambiguous than these universal fables would have us believe.
Witches can be right
Giants can be good
You decide what's right
You decide what's good
An impromptu fire alarm went off before the end of Act One, clearing the theatre unexpectedly with the audience being told to evacuate the building.
Standing out in the afternoon sunshine waiting to be let back in, there was almost a sense that this bizarre moment was a conceit of the directors, so in keeping was its reminder that we all get woken up from the illusion of fairytales at some point in our lives.
And yet there was an even more pertinent reminder of this poignant notion to come for myself and my mother later that afternoon.
Sitting in the dark of the theatre for Act Two and witnessing the slow, dawning realisation for numerous characters on stage that their fairytale ending in Act One is not all its cracked up to be with the spectre of death hanging over their lives, the profundity of the piece makes itself increasingly apparent.
Culminating with the sublime triptych of songs, Children Will Listen, No More and No One Is Alone, both we, the audience, and the characters realise that often our fairytale dreams of youth are soured by the bitter experience of life with all of its tumultuous ups and downs. Yet perhaps, somewhere in the midst of that uncertainty we find our courage as protagonists of our own stories.
When you've lost someone close to you (especially a parent) the lyrics of No One Is Alone hit especially hard and as I watched the song performed on stage with my dear mother sat next me on that Thursday, our feelings of sorrow synchronised as the loss of my late father was felt ever deeper.
The power of great art is that it reminds us of our human fraility and the folly of pursuing absolutes. Into The Woods takes archetypes that appeared to have a single narrative function and makes them fully three dimensional so that we can see their humanity and suffering more completely represented and relatable to ours.
From laughing at cowardly Princes and applauding emboldened Princesses who would have known that upon leaving the theatre our thoughts would be switched to the death of an actual Queen.
Queen Elizabeth II to be exact.
And although we were now returned from the fairytale kingdom on stage to our own united kingdom, the realisation we both felt was similar to that of the central characters from Into The Woods.
No one lives forever and all fairytales have to face up to the uncertain reality behind the curtain.
And now the curtain had fallen on the seventy year monarch's reign and just like that, we headed home, finding art truly does imitate life.
Perhaps next time I'll take an umbrella.