Chris Willman — Theater Critic

There is, and part of that is finally, once and for all, wiping the taste of the 2014 Disney movie adaptation out of everyone’s minds. It’s not that Rob Marshall’s adaptation was a total disaster (the lingering general consensus among “Into the Woods” fans mostly amounts to: “Not nearly as bad as I expected”), but it was a filmic treatment of a tragicomedy that seemed to be about equally afraid of both slapstick and sorrow, favoring an inoffensive, mushy middle. What a relief it is, then, for anyone who might not have seen a stage version since then, to re-experience all the chortle-out-loud moments that got undercut for the purpose of screen realism. (It’s worth pointing out that the show’s polarized moods are not so schematically split up that the authors don’t throw in plenty of laugh lines even after things get deeply sad and dark.) How much greater, on top of that, when two of the theater’s great conjoined show-closers — “No One Is Alone” and “Children Will Listen” — arrive a little before 11 and, on cue, you find yourself checking your tear ducts, not your watch.