BWW Reviews: Fiasco's INTO THE WOODS is Neither Forest Nor Trees

The most impressive feature of Fiasco Theater's chamber production of Into The Woods, now mounted Off-Broadway by Roundabout Theater, greets the audience upon entering. Derek McLane's intriguing set is a forest of antique gold piano frames with ropes resembling the instrument's strings. There are wooden planks below and an assortment of mismatched chandeliers above.

Specialists in minimalizing large-scale plays, Fiasco uses multiple casting to adapt James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's intellectually elite musical fairy tale for a company of ten. They're joined onstage by music director Matt Castle, who supplies most of the accompaniment from his upright. (Some songs are arranged for banjo and guitar, giving them an interesting bluegrass feel.)

If the staging seems cluttered at times or generally routine, perhaps it's because the production's artistic supervisors are all on stage playing leading roles: Jessie Austrian (co-artistic director, Baker's Wife), Ben Steinfeld (co-director, co-artistic director, Baker) and Noah Brody (co-director, co-artistic director, Lucinda, Wolf, Cinderella's Prince).

There's the kind of low-budget creativity that's typical of such endeavors (a big spool of yellow yarn for Rapunzel's hair, actors fluttering folded sheet music to represent birds and a couple of guys standing behind curtains hanging from a rod as Cinderella's step-sisters) but nothing strikes as especially clever.

These would be minor problems if it weren't for the fact that, despite a smattering of Broadway credits, the youthful company members don't display the acting chops or the vocal abilities to play their roles on a level you'd expect from a major New York theatre company. In varying degrees (one especially severe) performers seem to be singing out of their ranges and without much mastery of lyric phrasing. The acting rarely goes beyond the surface; a disaster for a musical with such deeply-involved themes and passages requiring lyrical dexterity.

There are some worthy moments, like Steinfeld's simple and touching "No More" and Andy Grotelueschen's dour reactions as Milky White, but Fiasco's Into The Woods would be better received as a small town or college production. Aside from the set, it is not of Off-Broadway quality.

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