Step beyond the treeline at the Bridge Theatre and Into the Woods reveals itself not as a nostalgic Sondheim revival, but as something far richer and more troubling. Under the assured direction of Jordan Fein, the forest becomes a place of seduction and consequence – a shifting psychological landscape where desire is indulged, punished and quietly mourned. This is a production that sheds the safety of fairytale whimsy and replaces it with a beguiling, grown-up intensity.
At its centre lies the fragile domestic story of a baker and his wife, bound together by love yet hollowed out by longing. Their childlessness is not treated lightly, nor sentimentally, but as an ache that seeps into every exchange. Relief appears in the unlikely form of a witch next door, whose solution arrives in riddling fragments: a cow of impossible purity, a crimson cloak, hair the colour of corn, a shoe spun from gold. As wishes are voiced, they ripple outward, drawing Cinderella, Jack and Little Red Riding Hood into a shared moral maze, accompanied by posturing princes and a wolf whose menace feels all too real.
What distinguishes Fein’s interpretation is its emotional credibility. The cast perform in their own voices, resisting theatrical affectation and grounding the story in recognisable human behaviour. The result is a production that feels psychologically truthful: funny not because it winks at the audience, but because it captures the absurdity of how people behave when they want something badly enough. These fairytale figures fret, bicker, hesitate and misjudge with unnerving familiarity.
Visually, the staging is quietly breathtaking. Tom Scutt’s design conjures a towering woodland that presses inwards rather than inviting escape; a forest that feels less enchanted than interrogative. It is a place where identities blur and instincts take over. Aideen Malone’s lighting sculpts the space with almost moral intent, casting characters into stark illumination or plunging them into shadow at precisely the moments when their choices curdle.
The performances are uniformly strong, but several linger long after the curtain falls. Jamie Parker’s baker is tightly coiled, tentative and palpably afraid of failure, while Katie Brayben brings his wife a warmth edged with steel; together they chart a marriage that feels genuinely lived-in, moving seamlessly from irritation to intimacy. Jo Foster’s Jack and Gracie McGonigal’s Little Red Riding Hood chart unsettling journeys into maturity, their loss of innocence neither symbolic nor softened. Red’s encounter with the wolf is staged with visceral shock – a moment of genuine horror that ripples through the auditorium.
There is wit here too, and a welcome irreverence. The princes, played with delicious vanity by Oliver Savile and Rhys Whitfield, strut and preen with comic excess, while Chumisa Dornford-May’s Cinderella is granted a quiet agency that resists romantic simplification. Details delight without distracting: a wonderfully expressive cow, exaggerated codpieces, and costume flourishes that gleefully puncture heroic masculinity.
Towering above them all, however, is Kate Fleetwood’s Witch. By turns scathing, slyly humorous and ultimately heartbreaking, her performance anchors the production’s emotional weight. When she sings “Stay With Me”, it is not a plea for obedience but an exposed cry of maternal fear: raw, trembling and profoundly moving. It is the moment where the evening’s spectacle collapses into something painfully human.
Beneath its theatrical bravura, Into the Woods remains a meditation on responsibility – how personal desire collides with communal consequence, and how the stories we inherit shape the choices we pass on. Fein allows these ideas to surface organically, trusting the audience to sit with discomfort rather than smoothing it away. Beauty and brutality exist side by side, neither cancelling the other out.
Provocative, unsettling and unexpectedly tender, this Into the Woods trades comfort for complexity. It is a production that understands that fairytales endure not because they reassure us, but because they dare to tell the truth, even when that truth is dark, tangled and impossible to ignore.
Into The Woods at The Bridge Theatre until 30 May 2026
