No I haven’t heard every musical produced on Broadway in the past decade – but I’d be surprised to find any show more ravishingly beautiful, more lyrical or sweeter than “The Light in the Piazza.” Is there a musical gene that runs in families? We don’t know for sure – but since Light’s music and lyrics are written by Adam Guettel, grandson of musical theater legend Richard Rogers (“Oklahoma,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “Carousel”), he may be the best evidence yet that musical genius can be inherited.

“The Light in the Piazza” has just opened in Washington, in a production directed by Molly Smith, for Arena Stage. It hits all the right notes – but something is missing. The show ends up feeling thin. The lovely voices, the beautiful set, the strong performances don’t set off a river of tears, or even provide a fully engaging evening of theater. Why?

The problem starts with the concept. This is described as a “chamber” version of the show, with a reduced orchestra of five (electric piano, harp, violin, cello, and double bass) sitting in for the larger, original band, which featured a group of fifteen musicians with more strings, winds, some percussion, and a far lusher sound. Chamber versions of musicals have gotten popular in the past few years – and the cost savings are not the only reason. A small backing ensemble, presented on stage as part of the action or embedded in the scenery, can add an element of closeness and intimacy missing from a bigger orchestra.

But, in this case, the meaning of the show is carried not only by the pitches, harmonies, and voices – but by the sheer power of the music, including its timbre, rhythm, and loudness. With fewer instruments, some depth is palpably gone.

But what’s absent most of all in this production is a spark that would allow us to believe in and care about the relationship between the two young people, Clara and Fabrizio, who “meet cute” when her hat blows off in a Florentine square, he catches it, and the two fall hard for each other.

It’s 1953. Margaret Johnson has brought her daughter Clara to Europe with some hope that she can provide for her a better, richer life than she herself has lived.

The obstacle to that life is a mysterious and clearly mid-century malady – Clara, when she was 12, was kicked in the head by a pony – leaving her with a subtle but permanent brain injury. She is, literally, damaged goods, in the view of the day. She is a woman, but childlike, and in the eyes of her mother, unlikely to find a mate.

Despite her pessimistic outlook, Margaret slowly begins to feel hope for her daughter’s life as a woman. Maybe Clara can find a match far better than Margaret’s own loveless marriage to an unimaginative lump back home.

The show then becomes the story of how can Margaret can carry her daughter over the finish line, helping her find love and avoid disappointment with Fabrizio, and hide her daughter’s volcanic ups and downs and unsettling insecurities from Fabrizio’s family.

Guettel takes an operatic approach to his music. A number of tunes that a classical composer might call motifs, reoccur in the show and hook our subconscious with the emotional content and shape of their melodies.

Since it’s set in Italy, and features swaths of dialogue sung by Fabrizio’s family in Italian – it almost seems as if the entire subplot about his squabbling brother and his parents is inserted to emphasize the operatic aspects of the show…

But there’s no doubt, in the end, that this is an American musical in all its glory. As the couple makes a commitment to stay together forever, Guettel the lyricist spotlights the magic of Guettel the composer as the lovers sing “I think I hear the sound of wrap your arms around me” followed by phrase upon phrase of wordless song on open syllables of “ah.” What is the sound of “wrap your arms around me?” We hear it, and are ourselves in love.

But the stage picture that keeps returning to my mind is the image of Clara and Fabrizio coyly chasing each other around a hotel bed – before their first kiss. Yes, it’s a children’s game because Clara is childlike and Fabrizio naïve. But, God, if you don’t believe they really want each other as adults, deeply and sensually, then the fabulous and intimate connection this music carries in its every note is wasted. And that, in the end, is the feeling of a missed connection that I carried out of the theater.

(Stacy Keach as Lear, Howard Witt as The Fool; photo Steve Mencher)

The king’s three daughters have a chance to claim their inheritance, as “King Lear” opens. He’s stepping down. To get their fair share of the kingdom, all they have to do is tell daddy how much they love him.

Goneril and Regan have been practicing. They love him madly, truly, deeply, and extravagantly. More than their own husbands, they tell him. More than life itself. But when young Cordelia, the third sister, is asked what she has to say to best her sisters, she can add no more than “nothing.”

“Nothing,” says the king, “will come of nothing.”

Shakespeare, in this melancholy guise, is an existentialist, a pessimist, a man for whom tragedy is not complete unless it’s accompanied by murder and madness. A man at home in the land of nothing.

Director Robert Falls knows this side of Shakespeare. The artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and Tony-winning director of several of its triumphant transfers to Broadway, Falls has set “King Lear” in Eastern Europe, as an untethered state drifts into chaos, anarchy, and ethnic cleansing. He has found commonalities in the breakup of Lear’s kingdom and the bloodshed that ensued after Marshal Tito died in 1980 or the uncertainty after Romania’s Ceausescu was executed.

Count me among those who passionately hate Shakespeare that’s updated for the sake of variety or “engagement” with modern audiences. The conceits usually fall apart by scene two, when you wonder why these modern folks are spouting iambic pentameter. So why does this production work?

I’d say it’s because of the absolute conviction of the actors and production team. Their passion and commitment are bent to the common work of telling this spellbinding story. We all have fathers, of course. And for those of us with daughters, don’t we crave their love, their acceptance, their agreement to carry on our hopes and dreams in ways more ineffable than sons could?

Did I mention that I saw “King Lear” on Father’s Day? Robert Falls, perhaps having heard that I’d suggested running our “King Lear” story at AARP on Father’s Day grinned at me conspiratorially when he saw me, asked if I was having a good time, and assured me he was. “Father’s Day,” he muttered, eyes gleaming. Couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me or sharing a joke.

Yes, a good time was had by all. As Gloucester’s eyes are gouged out like so much troublesome jelly. As Lear slides into madness and hopelessness. As, one after another, the characters in the play are shot, stabbed, garroted, raped, and murdered.

So what’s good about it? What are we “enjoying?” First is craft. It’s quite a kick to see Stacy Keach stretching himself to explore every cranny of this aging monarch. He is by turns wily, furious, absent, volcanic, and always believable and human. It’s the performance of a lifetime for a man who has had a career that never moved in a straight line. MacBird, Hamlet, Macbeth, Mike Hammer, and the voice that launched a thousand documentaries. Here he seems at home on stage, after wowing Chicago in this role in 2006, and surviving a stroke last spring. He’s alive, and loving it.

The second great pleasure of this production is to be in the presence of what I might call a Chicago school of ensemble acting. I’ve been enjoying this tsunami of energy since my days in Chicago in the early 1970s, and most recently in the fabulous work of Mary Zimmerman. Chicago’s best directors and the actors they work with seem to operate at a fever pitch; they trust each other to be brave and unselfish, and turn themselves inside out in public.

Did I mention that Bob Falls is a madman and a genius? He knows that “Lear” – a play about love and pain, about seeing and nothing, about power and corruption – is expressed in every syllable of language on the page, and every gesture made by every person on stage. There is no wasted sound or motion in this “Lear.” It moves like a runaway freight train. The work he does in animating “Lear” is work all directors do. He just does it as well as anyone working today.

This particular train, by the way, is on the road to Hell, where we are deposited, spent and weary at the end of the evening.

Michael Kahn’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, presenting “Lear” in the nation’s capital through the end of July, has been warning Washington for months about this show. Expect nudity and extraordinary violence, they said. In fact, they were so concerned about possible offense to the unwary that the show comes literally with a warning sticker that it is for “Mature Audiences Only.” We’ll pray it finds them.

A dog came in the kitchen
And stole a crust of bread,
Then cook up with the ladle,
And beat him ’til he was dead.
Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb
And wrote upon the tombstone
For the eyes of dogs to come…
(repeat)

Is there a name for this kind of Escher-like song that winds around and bites its tail and provides the promise that it could go on forever? Let me know.

So. Bill Irwin as Vladimir, one of two existential tramps, has come on stage singing this ditty to open the second act of “Waiting for Godot.”

The second act, always an Everest for a playwright to conquer, is especially important to ‘Godot,’ since it is a play about such fundamental questions as: what does our life mean? What is memory? If our being here is a result of God’s work, is it an act of bad faith on His part? And if God has written Act I, what’s the evidence it actually happened, and who’s in charge during Act II?

Spoiler alert.  Did we mention that this heavenly playwright, director, puppet master, or phantasm–God, Godot, God-Oh–never comes?

And yet we wait.

Meanwhile – in Bill Irwin’s singing, I found the meaning of a play nearly everyone acknowledges as one of the towering achievements of 20th century drama. The hit production, extended through July, represents the first time since its New York premiere in 1956 that “Waiting for Godot” has returned to Broadway.

Back to Irwin. The funny thing that happens at the top of Act Two is that after Irwin finishes his song, he keeps singing the rest of his dialogue. I don’t believe that’s a stage direction. There certainly isn’t a score. Yet every word is sung with carefully considered pitch and rhythm. Perhaps he sang all the way through Act One as well, but now there’s no way to go back and be sure.

The content is almost secondary. Vague stuff about the Bible, and whether we’re surrounded by the souls of all the people who ever lived. Perhaps we’re already one of those dead. We fear that we’re here on earth living in a meaningless dream.

“Let’s go. We can’t. Why not? We’re waiting for Godot.” Beat.

What’s funny, too, is that Irwin is sharing the stage with one of Broadway’s best and most accomplished musical comedy stars. And Nathan Lane as Vladimir’s partner in life, Estragon, refuses to sing.  Instead, he communicates using every inch of his body. With a turn of the head here, a spray of “air quotes” there, a slightly raised eyebrow to top it all off, Lane reminds us that we are in the presence of an actor used to owning the stage, yet fully comfortable sharing it. But there’s no shtick. No trademark Nathan Lane wiseguy-isms. Or not too many.

At this point in thinking about Godot, I went back to find out which part–Estragon or Vladimir, Nathan Lane or Bill Irwin–was originally played by Bert Lahr, best known as the rubber-legged Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. It was Estragon–the member of the duo with fewer questions, more time for dreaming, and a bit higher highs and lower lows. Perhaps when the Wizard of Oz is next revived, in some medium, Lane can return the favor by playing the scaredy-cat without a lion’s courage.

Second Acts. As we grow older, is change possible? The barren tree, which dominates the set of grey rockpiles has sprouted mysterious and rather useless leaves during intermission.

Is that change? Do people in command, like the brutish Pozzo played by an imperious and physically imposing John Goodman, change, even if it’s not to their advantage? And what of Pozzo’s slave, the ironically named Lucky? Are we surprised when he insists on handing his own chains to master Pozzo, as if to reinforce his powerlessness, and ours? (With four spectacular performances, John Glover’s feral Lucky is the only one recognized with a Tony nomination.

Goodman plays the Second Act as a beached walrus, a killer whale who has forgotten how to kill. Yes, kings and emperors die. Ashes to ashes. Pozzo is blind. Sans eyes, sans teeth, as Shakespeare had it, sans everything.

So what are we to take away from Godot? What keeps us from rising out of our seats at the end of Act Two, and slitting our wrists about the hopelessness and meaninglessness of waiting for something that is sure never to come?

What sustains us? The waiting itself? Friendship? The power of words to conjure up a human world that, in flashes, almost makes the whole thing worthwhile? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s song. Bill Irwin’s magical addition to Samuel Becket’s language gives it the wings that are only latent on the page. Ideas, emotions, our physical beings, the tone and smack of music, matter. We matter.

And then there’s laughter.  Maybe that’s what makes life bearable. There’s plenty of evidence in this warm and funny production that laughter can heal. Almost as much as the evidence that it cannot. This can’t be mere happiness of course. Laughing, as Vladimir know, grabbing his nether regions to staunch the pain from every chortle, hurts.

Still. That’s the conundrum. One of the funniest plays ever written about nothingness and existential dread sends the crowd out into the street on a Wednesday afternoon, happy to face another set of blows. That’s why Godot is good and great.

Now if I could only get to London, where Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are dazzling audiences in Godot this summer, my life would be complete.

And although I speak some Spanish, I’m not good enough to appreciate whether Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Spanish translations catch the quicksilver poetry of the young Stephen Sondheim.I’m told that the early previews in Washington (I caught the show on December 30, and the plan was to open to the press January 7) included supertitles so that English-only speakers could understand the large sections of Spanish in the show. They’d done away with the translations by the time we caught WSS – presumably on the theory that most of the audience would catch on to the action in this well-known and well–loved show, and that the slight feeling of disorientation English speakers might experience was a good metaphor for what Spanish speakers cope with upon coming to America.

[Read about West Side Story in Spanish or English]

Perhaps. But as anyone who has seen and loved West Side Story over the past 50 years will tell you, the Spanish/English problem is not the main reason why the show sometimes refuses to play. The problem, as my cousin Marc says, is all those tough guys dancing around. The Jets and Sharks want to kill each other, but Jerome Robbins has them dancing with each other instead.I’m absolutely sure that this was exciting, even thrilling, in 1957. But since the movie came out in 1961, the dancing has effectively killed much of the drama in WSS, at least to my eye and ear.

Beyond that – the cops, especially Officer Krupke, seem all wrong in this production; the musical arrangements sometimes seem out of sync; and it’s far too easy to leave the theater dry-eyed and unaffected by the drama.

Arthur Laurents, the show’s librettist (and the director of this production) who is now 90 years old, has tried to reimagine the show for an America where Spanish is now on the verge of becoming our semi-official second language. He’s also juiced up the anger and psychosis of the gang members to avoid the prancing killers problem. But unless the show changes significantly before it gets to Broadway, there could be a major train wreck.

Photo by Joan Marcus. Josefina Scaglione as Maria and Matt Cavenaugh as Tony.

The storytelling of course, is practiced, and perfect. Guy Noir makes an appearance, which fits better than a trip to Lake Wobegon. And Keillor settles in for a story of lost love that bows to O’Henry, without relinquishing his own place in the narrative firmament. (photo credit: Brian Velenchenko)

It’s a pleasure to spend time in Keillor’s company in this small room, when so much of your experience of him has been either on the radio, or in a big theater, or in the slightly misfiring film that was made of Prairie Home a few years back. Here, Keillor is the host of an intimate party… with accompanist Rich Dworsky ably commanding the Steinway… sharing his favorite songs, telling stories about his first visits to the big city and giving great thanks to the unnamed assistant who rescued his first short story from the slush pile and helped it find a home in The New Yorker. And thus, he says, a career was born.

Favorite moments – the music of Irving Berlin – “All Alone” and “What’ll I Do”; “Save the Last Dance,” by under-appreciated master songwriter Doc Pomus; and settings of sonnets that Keillor himself writes – a CD of these is on the way in 2009.

As any fan knows, Keillor is masterful in blending his voice in perfect harmony. When I saw his show, he had asked his radio guest of the night before, Andra Suchy, to stay on and do a few numbers. Keillor’s harmony sometimes overwhelmed her melody, but, hey, it was his show. “Man in Tux in Red Shoes with Piano” runs Sunday nights through December 28th.

reinventing the wheel:

this was the most prominent takeaway for me. I’ve been doing stuff on the web since 1995, and used to be involved with museum folks who were putting up the first web sites, and trying to change the visitor experience, democratizing and diffusing the content in their stuffy institutions… next time, maybe get one of these folks, like Steve Dietz, to talk about lessons learned in this endeavor in the past 13 years…

can we really sit in a room, and have someone tell us they’re inventing the encyclopedia, or that “local” radio content is something new… perhaps this is someone who never heard a dj shout out to somebody’s girlfriend…

but still… 30% of the conference was pure genius and inspiration.

For example, think about language:

instead of trying to “monetize” the web, Jimmy Wales calls Wikipedia a “charity” — not a five oh one see three — a charity. To me, that’s genius.

Free the culture, free the people, free us from our hidebound organizations and the stultifying culture of so many of them.

And let’s continue the dialogue. My idea for next time: a secret team not only live blogs the conference, but tells stories about it, and anybody can take part in the workshop to make that happen. The resulting stories go nearly live to the web, as a complement to the C-SPAN style live streams.

anybody wanna join me?

@menschmedia

Perhaps the last is the most interesting. As a rather clueless 55-year-old, I’d never heard of Newsom, let alone heard her sing. But the excitement of going to the big city is partly about serendipity. With an extra night to see a show, I scoped out the most exciting event that had the maximum hip signifiers (BAM, sold out, freak folk, harpist, accompanied by a symphony orchestra) and begged a ticket because of my media connections as a senior producer at the senior’s product.

So who and what are Joanna Newsom? Well, everyone there was in their twenties and thirties. Everyone was dressed as an artistic sort, or a tech type. And Ms. Newsom was a winsome pop songstress, who sometimes sounded like a mewling cat, but only enough to scare away the old folk. With roots in Irish and Scottish folks songs, singer songerwriter expressionism, and straight from the heart girlish charm, Newsom was that perfect work of art, a singer who spoke directly into the ears of her audience.

To hear her, search for her on YouTube…

More on Barbara Cook, and Judy Kuhn as Laura Nyro, as soon as I can prove that more than three people have read this recent post. Write to me: menschmedia(at)yahoo.com.

See my most recent work at http://radioprimetime.org/specials/

The producers of Eric Bogosian’s “Talk Radio” on Broadway, which stars hyperserious Liev Schrieber, are taking out huge print ads complaining that their radio spots have been “banned.” Apparently, the words “pet orgasm” cannot be spoken into the ether in virginal New York City. Listen for yourself. Of course the controversy is much more valuable than the small number of impressions that would have been made by the spots. Got us to listen, didn’t they?

Tristan

“The Tristan Project” brings together the hottest talent in performance today, including director Peter Sellars, video artist Bill Viola, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. They have reimagined Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde” in a staging that is dominated by Viola’s giant, ultra-high-definition video images. The Project yanks Wagner’s opera into the 21st Century, for better or worse, and demands we consider it as something brand new.

Heard in its premiere engagement at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the result was, in turn, exhilirating and stupefying. The video tended to overpower the singers, erasing them from the scene, while their voices and the performance of the LA Phil represented the music in all its glory. The artists have continued development since then, and Tristan may have grown more focused or more ponderous.

Read more here.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is turning his attention to the musical of “Young Frankenstein,” as his megahit “The Producers” gets ready to close. “The Producers” was a great show, but most of the headlines today have to do with business: the first $100 orchestra ticket, the first $480 big spender ticket, the billion dollars in worldwide grosses since the show opened on Broadway in 2001 with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. It closes in April after about 2,500 performances, 18th on the all-time longest running list, according to the New York Times. (with free membership)

(Jimonn Cole, Pascale Armand, and Lynnie Godfrey, photo by Scott Suchman for Arena)

In Paulette Randall’s staging of the play at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., we don’t believe that Solly Two Kings and Eli worked together for years in the Underground Railroad; we miss the secret looks and signs that would alert us to the love and dependencies these characters have for one another. And the outsized, and histrionic behavior of the individual characters never allows them to quite mesh with each other, but merely calls attention to their individuality. The play glows with wonder and pain, especially in the second act, but the lack of connections is felt throughout, and stops the performance from engaging and devastating us, as this work might clearly do.

August Wilson, who died in October, 2005 left behind a towering achievement. He wrote a play for every decade of the 20th Century, based on the life of the Black community in his native Pittsburgh. Many critics agree with hometown writer Christopher Rawson, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who says “For scope and power, the Pittsburgh Cycle is a coherent, focused achievement unmatched by any other American playwright.” That said, the first act of Gem of the Ocean builds slowly and fitfully. We meet Aunt Ester (Lynnie Godfrey) when Citizen Barlow (Jimonn Cole) knocks at her door seeking absolution from an unspecified crime. Eli (Clayton Lebouef) and Black Mary (Pascale Armand) live under Ester’s roof, and traveling salesman Rutherford Selig (Timmy Ray James) is a regular visitor, treated as another family member, even though he’s white.

We soon meet Caesar (LeLand Gantt), the local enforcer, and Solly Two Kings (Joseph Marcell), a former slave with family left behind down South. Before we know it, we’re caught up in the politics of the local mill, and the mysterious death of a man pursued by the law for stealing a bucket of nails – a crime of which he is innocent. As we wait for the plot to jell, and for the true meanings to be revealed in Act Two, we start to know the characters and their distinctive tales.

Arena’s stage presents at least one challenge to a director, one which artistic director Molly Smith usually solves creatively. With a theater completely in the round, actors must always be moving, so that only a word or two, but never a whole sentence or beat is lost. Too often in this show, beats are thrown away, as actors deliver a series of lines to two thirds of the house, without awareness that their backs are not expressively telling the same story.

It’s in Act Two, when we finally realize that this show contains a powerful heart, that the production nearly redeems itself. It turns out that Aunt Ester’s secret ceremony of cleansing and renewal involves an exorcism of sorts. She conjures the history of slavery, from the first passage across the Atlantic to the last broken shackle. Aunt Ester’s magic is the ability to recall that black history, and use it to redeem souls, shooting them forward into the 20th Century and new possibilities for African American lives.

In staging this ceremony, Paulette Randall brings the theater alive with ghosts and pain. The circular stage no longer fights the actors and hides the action, it becomes a slave ship, groaning and creaking, howling with the screams of millions of Africans lost at sea on their way to the new world in slave ships. When things return to normal, it’s all the more disappointing that the ensemble, briefly having risen to this peak, once again fritters our attention away on posturing and missed connections. But for a moment, we glimpse the play’s shattering core, and we can understand how it fits in to August Wilson’s memorable cycle of life and pain for Black America in the last century.

And — spoiler alert — what was all that in the second act with a Giant shaking the scenery and killing off half the cast?

Lauren Williams as Little Red Riding Hood, James Moye as the Wolf, photo by Carol Pratt

Now I’m twenty years older and I understand that fairy tales don’t always have happy endings and that loss and disappointment are part of life. I know from personal experience that “Once upon a time” and “I wish” and “Happily ever after” all rub against each other in unpredictable ways, just like Sondheim and James Lapine (who wrote the book) insist they do.

I wasn’t ready for “Into the Woods” when I first saw it. But the fabulous new production which opens Signature Theatre’s $16 million home in Northern Virginia makes sense all the way through, and delivers the show’s heart-rending, and ultimately heartwarming, message. Act II? Maybe it still drags a tiny bit. But that’s life.

Welcome Home

First, the jaw dropping new space for the D.C. area’s best theater company is another kind of fairy tale. (New Signature lobby, photo Scott Suchman) That’s the one where hard work and penury are rewarded, and creativity and pluck triumph. The theater began in 1989 as part of the Arlington, Virginia arts incubator program. The loyal audience, which got used to dodging traffic along the industrial strip where the theater lived in an old bumper plating factory, now numbers more than 4500 subscribers, and the operation has an annual budget of $4.5 million, which still seems absurdly low for what they accomplish.

The theater’s artistic director and co-founder, Eric Schaeffer, has developed a personal style that depends on honest, unamplified voices, and performances big enough to be appealing, but intimate enough to experience from inches away. You entered Signature’s old space, fondly called The Garage, for each production through a hallway designed to introduce you to the ambience, colors, and feel of the set. Even with the $16 million upgrade, that’s one of many touches they’ve brought to their new home, just around the corner from the old. (Hear WETA-FM’s Deb Lamberton on the new theater space.)
More to the point, the new spaces (there are two theaters now, one seating 299, and a 99-seater for smaller shows) are still “black boxes.” That is, infinitely malleable for designers who can decide where the audience, the orchestra, and the action will go in response to each script. It’s clear that Robert Perdziola, who designed the set and costumes for “Woods,” was out to give the big space (called the MAX) a real workout. And you get a sense of exploration, of every trick being pulled out and tested for effect. (Set under construction, photo Scott Suchman)

Fairy tales for grownups

In some ways, “Into the Woods” is like one of those clever kids’ movies that appears to tell one kind of story, but signals by its language and attitude that it’s speaking over the heads of its purported audience directly to their parents. “Once upon a time…” it begins… “I wish…” — and off we go, into the worlds of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and the Baker and his Wife.

Which of these, you may ask, is not like the others? It would be easy to watch “Into the Woods” and assume that the last story, of a childless and bereft baker and his wife was one of those you were out of the room for when the teacher read them in third grade — but actually, that one is new, slipped in among the others to amplify the themes of love and loss, of hope for the next generation, and sadness inevitably mixed with that hope. (See NYT 11-1-87, with registration)

And that’s not to say the other stories are played quite straight. Little Red Riding Hood is a bit more annoying than you remember her. Rapunzel, too has her quirks. Cinderella is actually running away from her Prince, and with good reason. And Jack was always a little greedy with his loot from the Giant — but here, his greed is nearly biblical in scale, and causes a world of pain to all the other characters in that corrective and restorative Act II.

A flawless ensemble

As the Baker, Daniel Cooney is earnest, sympathetic, though he seems to take a few moments to settle into his quest. It’s not long before it’s our quest, too. The witch has challenged him and his wife to a cosmic fairy tale scavenger hunt, demanding they gather a token from all the other characters: it’s the thing our story’s protagonists are least likely to want to part with (Cinderella’s golden slipper, Rapunzel’s hair). But if he can win the game, the baker and his wife will be rewarded with a child. The Baker’s Wife (April Harr Blandin) is in many ways at the center of the story. Her quest is not only to gather the tokens, but to convince her husband that she’s an equal partner in the hunt, and in their lives. Finally, late in Act One, the couple sing “It Takes Two.” They’ve figured out that way beyond biology, it takes two to make and raise a child. (photo by Carol Pratt)

At intermission, the quest is done, the couple is to be rewarded with a child, Rapunzel and Cinderella have met their mates, and Jack and his mom are thriving, growing rich with loot from the Giant’s lair. Oh, sure, there are losers, as there always are, like Cinderella’s ungainly sisters, and the Wolf, now a lovely wolf coat for Little Red Riding Hood.

But that troubling Act II brings complications we mightn’t have expected. Another loser, who shakes the scenery and booms over the theater’s loudspeakers like the voice of God, rejects the idea that happiness lasts forever. The Giant’s disembodied wife is out to settle some scores, and before we know it, everyone has lost what they so eagerly sought. But then, through the magic of Sondheim’s harmony, the characters find each other (No One is Alone) and point the way to the future (Children Will Listen).

Stephanie Waters as Cinderella is a sweet and conflicted foil to Lauren Williams’s acid-tongued Little Red Riding Hood; Rapunzel’s Prince, Sean MacLaughlin, and Cinderella’s Prince, James Moye, are perfectly matched airheads (think Luke and Owen Wilson in some of their lower IQ roles) as they gallop hither and thither, win the affection of their ladies, and wonder if they couldn’t have done better (Agony); and as Jack’s mother, Donna Migliaccio, a Signature co-founder, carries with her the 17-year history of direct emotional connection she’s brought to roles big and small from the theater’s inception to its full flowering.

No One is Alone

In a role played on Broadway by Bernadette Peters, Eleasha Gamble as the Witch makes the switch from crone to diva, and stirs the plots to keep them simmering. (Gamble and Erin Driscoll as Rapunzel, photo, Carol Pratt) When she realizes that not even a witch can have it all — magic and beauty, feelings and a fire-shooting staff — we sympathize almost despite ourselves. After all, aren’t we supposed to fear and hide from the evil witch character in these stories? Not in the world of Sondheim and Lapine, where personal responsibility and community trump evil.

But one character can have it all, and that’s composer and lyricist Sondheim. With wit and spirit, he keeps us shaking our heads at his endless creativity and bottomless store of awful puns and sparkling wordplay. You might want to shoot a songwriter who wrote, about a milk-less cow, that “We’ve no time to dither/while her withers wither with her.” Or, of Jack and his beanstalk, “If the end is right/it justifies the beans.” But no, celebrating, rather than shooting is what’s called for.

Because if all this cleverness were not in service of deep, human, emotional connections, we’d simply write it off as meaningless. Here, the opposite is true. Through quicksilver language and mellifluous song, in a production that melds the extraordinary talents of everyone involved, “Into the Woods” opens Signature Theatre’s own second act with a show and a production worthy of its storied history and its boundless future. Take that, F. Scott Fitzgerald.