Into the Woods – Noël Coward Theatre, London

4.5/5 stars

In today’s world fairy tales really don’t stand up to much scrutiny. The concept of happy ever after and solving all your problems by marrying a Prince or summoning a fairy godmother no longer seem plausible. And, if you do happen to get everything you ever dreamed of, what happens next?

For anyone unfamiliar with Into the Woods, it’s a Stephen Sondheim musical bringing together several familiar fairy-tale characters, including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack of beanstalk fame and Rapunzel and asks that rather interesting question: what happens when everyone gets their happily ever after?

At the centre of the story are a Baker (John Dagleish) and his Wife (Laura Pitt-Pulford), who desperately want a child but discover that a curse placed on their family by a Witch (Kate Fleetwood) has prevented them from having one. To reverse it, they must venture into the woods and collect four seemingly impossible items. Naturally, their journey brings them into contact with all sorts of familiar characters, each pursuing their own wishes, ambitions and occasionally rather questionable decisions.

The first half follows the characters as they chase their dreams, often at someone else’s expense. By the second half, things have become considerably more complicated. It turns out that getting everything you’ve ever wanted isn’t necessarily the wonderful experience Disney would have us believe.

You might remember the 2014 film adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and James Corden. Personally, I think this musical really benefits from being seen on stage.

We went to see the production at the Noël Coward Theatre following its transfer from the Bridge Theatre, where we’d seen it last year. I absolutely loved it the first time around, so I did wonder whether some of its magic might get lost in the transfer.

The Bridge has a considerably larger stage, which allowed director Jordan Fein and set designer Tom Scutt to make wonderful use of depth and space. There was a real sense of stepping inside a storybook, as though the pages had opened up around you and you were wandering through an enchanted forest. At the Noël Coward, the production has understandably had to be scaled down to fit the more traditional West End stage.

I don’t think the smaller space quite achieves that same sense of immersion. The accessible boxes also affected how much of the staging I could see. In a more conventional production at the Noël Coward, the restricted view towards the sides of the stage would not usually be a significant problem.

However, Into the Woods makes considerable use of the full width of the stage, with a lot of the action taking place at the extremities.From the box on the left-hand side, much of that action was not visible to me, due to the lighting rigs which reduced some of the visual impact of the woods compared with the head on unobstructed view at the Bridge Theatre. It’s a relatively specific issue, and one that may not affect every seat, but it did contribute to the sense that I was experiencing a less complete version of the production’s visual world.

That said, the production is still absolutely gorgeous.

The set design, combined with clever use of lighting and video design, creates a wonderfully imaginative world. There’s a real theatricality to the whole thing, with effects so clever that you occasionally find yourself wondering exactly how they’ve managed them.

I particularly loved the way the Giant was portrayed in the second half. Rather than creating something enormous and cumbersome on stage, the production uses lighting and visual effects to suggest its presence, and the result is extraordinarily effective. Sometimes what you don’t see is every bit as impressive as what you do.

Kate Fleetwood is an absolute joy as the Witch. It’s a character that could very easily become a rather exaggerated pantomime villain, but Fleetwood gives her so much more than that. She’s commanding, funny, occasionally terrifying and surprisingly vulnerable. Her performance has enormous presence, and vocally she’s magnificent. She manages to make the Witch both formidable and sympathetic, which is quite an achievement considering some of the things the character gets up to.

For me, she’s one of the absolute standouts of the evening.

John Dagleish and Laura Pitt-Pulford are excellent as the Baker and his Wife, providing much of the emotional heart of the story. Simbi Akande brings charm and personality to Cinderella, while Keith Ramsay’s Jack and Gracie McGonigal’s Little Red Riding Hood are equally entertaining.

The two Princes, played by Matthew Seadon-Young and Lucas Koch, are particularly wonderful and provide some of the funniest moments of the evening.

We’d seen Koch not that long ago playing Ernst Ludwig in Cabaret, and I was struck by how completely different his performance was here. It’s always fascinating seeing an actor move between such contrasting characters, and his ability to inhabit both so convincingly says a great deal about his versatility.

The Princes are incredibly vain, hopelessly self-absorbed and utterly convinced of their own superiority. I suspect they’d be considerably less enthusiastic about rescuing a princess if it involved doing anything that might ruin their hair! 

What impressed me most, though, was the strength of the company as a whole. There isn’t a weak link in the cast, and the singing is beautiful throughout, which is no small achievement given the demands of Sondheim’s famously intricate score. More importantly, everyone gives their character a distinct personality, balancing the humour with the increasingly serious emotions as the story progresses.

I think what makes Into the Woods so interesting is that it challenges the stories we’ve been told since childhood. We’re brought up with a fairly straightforward understanding of fairy tales. Good people are rewarded, bad people are punished, princes are heroic and witches are wicked.

Sondheim isn’t remotely interested in making things that simple.

Instead, he gives us characters who are flawed, contradictory and frequently responsible for creating their own problems. Their wishes have consequences, their actions affect other people, and being the hero of your own story doesn’t necessarily mean you’re behaving particularly well in somebody else’s.

The Witch is perhaps the best example of this. She’s supposedly the villain, yet at times she’s one of the most recognisably human characters on stage. Her actions aren’t always admirable, but you can understand where she’s coming from, which is more than can be said for some of the people we’re supposed to be rooting for.

Unfortunately, life isn’t a fairy tale, people aren’t entirely good or bad, and sometimes the things we think will make us happy turn out to be rather more complicated than we anticipated. It’s a surprisingly grown-up message for a musical involving magic beans, talking animals and a woman who has spent a considerable amount of time locked in a tower.

I loved Into the Woods at the Bridge Theatre, and I loved it again at the Noël Coward.

The performances and the production itself remain exceptional.

Beneath all the fairy-tale shenanigans, beautiful music and occasionally questionable royal behaviour, there’s a genuinely thoughtful story about what it means to be human.

It’s funny, clever, visually gorgeous and an absolute pleasure to watch. Kate Fleetwood’s Witch is particularly special and, for me, worth the price of admission alone.

If you get the opportunity to venture into these woods, I’d thoroughly recommend it.

Just don’t expect the princes to be quite as charming as advertised.

Accessibility at the Noël Coward Theatre

Overall, the Noël Coward Theatre is relatively straightforward to access for wheelchair users, though a few things are worth knowing before you visit.

The accessible entrance has a small rubber mat leading onto a long ramp, which takes you up the equivalent of three steps. One thing to be aware of is the limited headroom along this route. While this isn’t necessarily an issue for wheelchair users, taller companions walking alongside you may need to duck to avoid hitting their heads.

Once you reach the top of the ramp, the accessible toilet is immediately to your right. It’s a good size, with plenty of room to manoeuvre, which is always a welcome discovery in an older West End theatre.

There are two boxes designated for wheelchair users (box L & M), although they differ quite considerably in terms of space and ease of access.

The Box L is reasonably spacious once you’re inside and should comfortably accommodate a manual wheelchair or smaller power chair. However, getting in and out is a little more challenging, particularly if you need to reverse out. I discovered this firsthand, and it wasn’t the easiest manoeuvre.

Our preferred option is Box M, which is larger and has a wider doorway, making it much easier to navigate in a power chair. There’s enough space to position yourself comfortably without feeling as though you’re attempting a particularly complicated parking manoeuvre.

The only slight issue is that reaching Box M requires crossing the lobby, which can get quite congested and hard to navigate before performances and during the interval. The access hosts are excellent at helping you negotiate the crowds, but I’d recommend waiting until the lobby has quietened down if you can.

I really can’t praise the access hosts at the Noël Coward highly enough. They’re attentive, friendly and genuinely interested in understanding what assistance you need, rather than making assumptions. They ask, listen, and respond professionally without making the experience feel unnecessarily complicated. It’s exactly how access assistance should work.

Unfortunately, the biggest drawback at the Noël Coward is the view from the wheelchair-accessible boxes. You do feel a little like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show, sitting in your box looking down at the action. The difference is that they always seemed to have a pretty good view of what was going on.

Because the boxes are positioned at the sides of the auditorium, your view of the stage is quite sharply angled. For productions that keep most of the action towards the centre, this isn’t necessarily a major problem. However, when a show makes extensive use of the full width of the stage, as Into the Woods does, significant sections of the action can disappear from view. The problem can be even more pronounced for companions, whose seats are generally positioned further into the box, creating an even tighter viewing angle.

The theatre does offer additional access seats as an alternative, but these involve negotiating steps, so they won’t be suitable for everyone.

Overall, the accessibility experience at the Noël Coward is excellent. The facilities are good, the staff are exceptional, and the building is relatively easy to navigate.