Photo Credit: George Katskes Jr.
Musical fairy tale fusion closes-out the winter for Sunset Playhouse as it presents an enjoyable production of the beloved Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. Nathan Marinan and Carrie Gray play a baker and his wife cursed with infertility. Their only hope for a child lies in assembling the right spell components for a witch played with a darkly pleasant charm by Laura Monagle. The ensemble assembled has some impressive talent including Eric Welch and Steven Sizer as a couple of comically handsome princes and Ella Rose Kleefisch as a somewhat bratty Little Red Riding Hood who must learn a valuable life lesson along with the rest of the cast of assorted characters.
Marinan and Gray are great fun at the center of it all. The ponderous machinery of the plot doesn’t give the two of them much time to establish a heart to the central conflict of the story, but they do a wonderful job with what they’re given. Gray is crisply witty as she dives through the complications and convolutions that drive the story. Marinan seems suitably heroic as a man reluctantly forced into adventure.
Nick Korneski does quite a lot with a few chairs and tables and things adorning a pragmatically constructed set. Scenic elements hang around the periphery of the action until needed. Korneski aided in delivering a visual reality to the stage by clever work from James Sevens’ flashy, dramatic lighting and the heavy rumble of Heather Pulkoswki’s sound design. Pulkowski renders the immense power of the antagonist giants in heavy, ominous rumbling bass that thunders through the spacious space of the Furlan Auditorium.
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Through March 18 at Furlan Auditorium, 800 Elm Grove Road. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
