In Look, I Made a Hat, the second volume of his lyrics and musings about his work, Stephen Sondheim notes the unlikely genesis for Into the Woods: he and book writer James Lapine had concocted an idea for a TV special mashing up characters from similar comedies (Ralph and Alice Kramden from The Honeymooners, Archie and Edith Bunker from All in the Family) with characters from various cop and medical dramas, using a car accident as the narrative pretext for bringing them all together. When that project (perhaps unsurprisingly) fell apart, they decided to apply the concept of colliding worlds to stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, specifically Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood (here called “Little Red”) with the English folktale of Jack and the Beanstalk tossed into the mix. They then invented a childless baker and his wife (a mundane working-class couple, not unlike the Kramdens and Bunkers), whose quest to fulfill a scavenger hunt in order to overcome a witch’s curse on their fecundity intersects with the fairy-tale foursome.
Most importantly, Griffin keeps the farcical elements of the first act and the darker existential quandaries of the second in balance, and we see the roots of the latter winding through the former. Little Red (Lucy Godínez) has an unapologetic appetite, much like the Wolf (Matt Edmonds) she gleefully dispatches, but when the Giant’s Wife returns in search of Jack (Ben Barker), the slayer of her husband, the notion of killing monsters doesn’t feel quite so satisfying, or final.
Through 9/29: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 8 PM (except 9/15 and 9/29, 2 PM only), Tue 7:30 PM; also Wed 9/11, 3 PM, Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $50-$80.
