Into the Woods with Stephen Sondheim – a birthday treat!

It’s Stephen Sondheim’s eightieth birthday year and one of the highlights of the celebrations here in the UK is the production of his musical Into the Woods currently exciting audiences at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. This is a very grown up take on fairy tales old and new from Sondheim and his collaborator on the book, James Lapine. So if you go down to the woods today, you’ll meet Cinderella and her Sisters – and her Prince, Red Riding Hood and her Wolf, Rapunzel and her Prince, Jack with his cow and his beanstalk.

And you’ll also meet the characters in a brand new story – the Baker and his Wife who yearn for a child – and the witch who has put a spell on them so they can only conceive if they find the cape as red as blood, the cow as white as milk, the hair as yellow as corn and the slipper as pure as gold – which all come from the other better known stories of course.

Judi Herman went to meet some of these fairy tale characters, starting with the Baker and his Wife aka Mark Hadfield and Jenna Russell – who was one of the stars taking part in Sondheim’s eightieth birthday prom last month.

All photos by Catherine Ashmore

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