FAIRY TALE OR NOT

On October 8, 2022, at 2 p.m. I joined forty other Young at Heart members at the Arvada Center for Performing Arts to see the play, Into the Woods. Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Peter and the Magic Beans, Rapunzel, two princes, the baker and his wife were telling the audience their story. A witch had put a spell on the baker and his wife so they could not have a child, but she would remove the spell if they brought her a golden slipper, a white cow's milk, a red cape, and hair like the yellow of corn silk.

The search for the items begins when the baker buys the white cow from Jack for magic beans.  Looking for Cinderella's gold slipper, Red Riding Hood's red cape and a corn's silk will end the curse so the baker goes into the woods looking for the items. What the witch does not realize is that she also is cursed as an ugly witch but once she gets the items, she becomes a beautiful woman and loses her powers. Jack's beans grow into a tree that reaches into a giant's land. The giant wants revenge because Jack killed her giant husband. Some of the characters are eaten by the giant and those left learn to live together in harmony.

For me, I would have been satisfied for the play to end before intermission, yet it continues as real life and not fairy tales. Prince is not happy with Cinderella, Rapunzel does not make her prince happy, Jack loses his mother, and the baker takes Red Riding Hood and Jack to live with him. How the actors could memorize their singing parts which sounded like poetry is amazing. There was more singing than talking. The stage was surprising with ways for the actors to go in and off the stage. One scene where the wolf is in bed and is killed, surprised me when from the small bed out came Granny and Little Red Riding Hood. I haven't quite figured out how they did that. A seat at the end of the bed, would open and characters would enter it and disappear. The audience never knew where an actor was going to enter the stage or where they would exit, and it always surprised me!

When the play ended the actors were given a standing ovation. In the brochure there is a note from Lynne Collins, the director of the play. She mentions that she feels compassion for the witch since the witch doesn't know how to love and to let go. "I relate to the feeling of loss that characters experience alongside the beauty of making a new story and a new family within the realities, not the fairy tales, of life." And I guess that sums up the play of Into the Woods.

"(to her prince) My father's house was a nightmare,

your house was a dream, 

now I want something in between."

Cinderella