Nature’s way URITheatre wanders into Sondheim’s Woods BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Into the Woods Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine. Directed by Paula McGlasson. Musical direction by Lila Kane. With Elizabeth Gotauco, David T. Howard, Erin M. Olson, Jenette DelMonaco, Dan DaCunha, Patrick Lynch, Tiffany B. Page, Nathalie Del Vecchio , Donald J. Dallaire, and Ryan Romanowski. At URI Theatre through November 22.

Woody Allen made light of it, but everybody knows that his kind are scared of nature, what with snatching tree limbs and feral lobsters and whatnot. It took Stephen Sondheim to try to help him out, with a 1987 Broadway musical that shows how Mother Nature is downright maternal next to human nature, whose dark side New Yorkers are carefully trained to cope with from tothood.

Into the Woods, which is getting an enjoyable rendition at URI Theatre, takes a handful of Grimm Brothers fairy tales, tosses them together, and lets the characters sort out one another’s problems. As for happy endings in these updates, get real. But Sondheim provides much better: a we’re-in-the-same-rowboat call for pulling together, as apt before 9/11 as after.

Which is hardly to say that this mosaic of tales is grim. Much fun is had as we venture with this familiar gaggle of archetypes into the dark woods of our collective consciousness, yelping with them at every psychological pitfall. Everyone here has some urgent heart’s desire, which can be as basic as Jack and his mother not wanting to starve to death.

Quests interconnect. The baker and his wife, desperate for a child, are promised by a witch that their wish will be granted if they can find certain items for her. That brings them to Jack for his white cow, to Little Red Riding Hood for her red cape, and to Rapunzel and Cinderella for their golden hair and gold slipper.

Director Paula McGlasson, a choreographer originally, has made sure that all these characterizations are interestingly physicalized, with telling gestures and postures. Her casting is similarly on the money regarding physical types. So reed-thin Dan DaCunha stands tall as the Narrator and hunches over like a mile of twisted road as the magical Mystery Man, who pops up now and then to mess with the characters’ little minds. As Jack, of beanstalk fame, Patrick Lynch looks just round-faced and innocent enough for the role.

The folks we particularly care about in these overlapping tales are well portrayed, as well. Jenette DelMonaco is a spunky Little Red Riding Hood, as is Tiffany B. Page as Cinderella, muted a bit as befits castle-worthy decorum. As the baker and his wife, David T. Howard and Erin M. Olson are similarly convincing in their steadfast seeking and as a compatible couple. Their model for determination is the witch, whom Elizabeth Gotauco gives an extra little boost of entertaining exasperation.

Much like in The Fantasticks, while almost everyone gets what they wished for by intermission, dissatisfactions and unforeseen consequences follow like lengthening afternoon shadows. Blunder into briars and expect to come out blinded. Slay a giant and there are ramifications. To a pampered prince (Donald J. Dallaire and Ryan Romanowski), beauty is a rainbow to follow, and even a baker’s wife can be tempted to dally. To a homeless Rapunzel (Nathalie Del Vecchio), every day is a bad hair day. By the end of the story, there are casualties that even the Grimms didn’t admit to us.

All this is enhanced by Christian Wittwer’s scenic design, by turns somber and colorful, and David T. Howard’s costume design, in which even a peasant woman’s cap is fascinating to behold.

Since we’re talking Sondheim here, the music and lyrics tend to be as entertaining or compelling as necessary, as though that master of the craft is turning our responses on and off at a faucet. There’s the foreboding "Midnight" variations to end scenes, lastly reprised by the witch. There’s the droll "Agony," a duet by the princes that sends up their fist-to-forehead self-absorption.

The closing two songs do what is rarely accomplished in a play, even without the trouble of rhymes. "No One Is Alone," sung by the main characters, and "Children Will Listen," sung by the whole company, give definite form to what the story has implied. By that point, the musical has earned the sentimentality of its lyrics, which warmed the cockles of even cold-hearted New Yorkers to room temperature. The first is a call for standing by one another. (They back up Jack rather than the widow of the giant, whose hospitality he betrayed before killing him. Sondheim probably is saving examining the myopia of tribal loyalty for some still-in-progress musical.)

The last song comments on the Wall Street sentiment repeated earlier by the baker, that "If you know what you need, then you go and you find it and you take it." The song’s caution is: "Careful the things you say / Careful the tale you tell / Children will listen." Believe it or not, that doesn’t come across as hokey. Well, you had to be there. Which is an opportunity that I heartily recommend.