WHEN PLAYTIME IS OVER
Somewhere between “Once Upon a Time” and “Happily Ever After” there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agency; or as a baker’s wife sings in Into the Woods, “If you know what you want, then you go and you find it, and you get it.” The challenges and complications of getting what you want, or what you thought you wanted, are at the heart of The Hypocrites’ current production at the Mercury Theater.
James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s 1986 musical already invokes childhood through its mash-up of traditional Brothers Grimm fairy tales: The characters from “Cinderella,” “Rapunzel,” “Jack in the Beanstalk,” and “Little Red Riding Hood” are united by the quest of a childless baker and his wife to start a family. This production, under the direction of Geoff Button, doubles down by setting the performance in a playroom. Sally Dolembo’s costumes are kept in chests like old steamer trunks of “dress up” clothes, and the walls of William Boles’ set are covered with scrawled stick figures. Molded plastic school chairs surround the proscenium, and the cast of ten actors occupy these seats both during a nonchalant investigation of the set during preshow, and while not performing during the show.
The twist of presenting a play constructed from fairytales as a “let’s pretend” children’s hour is well-matched to the content of the first act. There is a litany of wishes, and each character makes an explosive gesture of gathered fingers swooping into the right of the mouth and the bursting forth into a splayed palm and straightened arm whenever the word “wish” is said. Tulle skirts become ball gowns when donned over jeans, Rapunzel’s tower is a playground slide, and Cinderella’s flying friends appear in the form of a Technicolor bird mobile that could be found in any nursery. The trees of these woods—dozens of balloons affixed to bungee cords—provide a cartoonish background which reminds us that in a child’s hands a stick may alternately be a tree, a sword, or a scepter.
However, the conceit that provides bright and light touches in the first act is incongruous in the second. Wishes are fulfilled, but happiness remains elusive, and the diminishing number of characters increasingly realizes that actions have consequences, even—or particularly—when the action is getting what you want. The indefatigable cheerfulness of the set’s balloons seems almost spiteful as the characters grapple with destruction, abandonment, and loss. There are some attempts at destruction in the second act: The Narrator, played by Blake Montgomery, goes from Mr. Rogers to Dr. Doom, affably putting on his cardigan in Act I, and then knocking down parts of the set in Act II.
The cast performs admirably, with Sarah Bockel bringing both knock-out vocals and tangible sorrow to the roles of Cinderella and Rapunzel. Aubrey McGrath’s Jack is a lovable young rube, Allison Hendrix as the Baker’s Wife demonstrates significant comic skill and Joel Ewing’s everyman Baker convincingly oscillates between being resolute and perplexed. I wish…that the staging were not so uneven, which would have allowed them to more fully display their skills.
photos by Evan Hanover
Into the Woods
The Hypocrites
Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Avenue
scheduled to end on March 30, 2014
EXTENDED to April 5, 2014
for tickets, call 773-325-1700 or visit www.MercuryTheaterChicago.com
for more info, visit www.the-hypocrites.com
for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com
